Usually for my birthday my daughter takes me somewhere glamorous. Last year it was Prague where I wore a long black velvet dress to the opera. The years before was Athens where we stayed in a gorgeous hotel and our room looked out at the Acropolis and we watched the changing of the guard.
This year, however, she has acquired a large yellow (, sorry, golden!) labrador so we drove to the wilds of Northumberland, the new labrador in back of a brand new ( and I mean that day!! ) Mercedes CLA 180 sport, gleaming white and smelling - of dog.
Izzie is seventeen months and has been rehomed three times. She thinks nothing of licking a bowl of fruit even though she knows it isn't hers and she likes bananas for breakfast, carrots for lunch and will east tomatoes when the wind is in the east.
Dogs, of course, were not allowed in the bedrooms at the cottage where we stayed but Izzie is very good at opening doors and managed to leap on both single beds before we could stop her. The covers were chocolate so you can imagine the mess.
She barked at the man who owns the cottage because he was working mostly in the communal garden.
On Boulmer beach she ate a huge quantity of seaweed and half a pasty outside Morrisons in Alnwick. We scoured the internet for pubs which liked dogs and were very upset when we found that the only pub in the village banished us to a cold and windy seafront while the locals ate their Sunday dinners and laughed at Izzie winding her lead around the tables, attacking a bench with her teeth and we cowered in hats, scarves and sweaters against the incoming tide.
We were greeted at the The Red Lion in Alnwick with a cacophony of barks and whines. There were labradors, sheepdogs and spaniels. Her favourite shop is Pets at Home or any supermarket that has discarded bread outside or the local park on Sundays where there are half eaten pizzas from the night before when the kinds smoked weed.
It's not just holidays. For Christmas I have bought her a bottle of Barker's Dog beer and Dog Cake Mix. I now own very expensive trainers ( from Cotswold ), serviceable green trousers from M&S and a hideous anorak with a gold zip. We usually go to Mughli's on Christmas Eve which is the wonderful Indian restaurant in Knutsford. Now we are looking forward to an evening spent by the fire, a take away and the delights of television and dog smelling sofas.
Boxing Day will be a walk in Tatton Park where she will be able to greet her friends. There will be tennis ball throwing and my kids will have the joy of seeing all the people they didn't know before they acquired a labrador. They are both very fit now and Athens and Prague seem a long way away but the beaches in Northumberland have been my second home since I was five years old when I walked my Boxer Dog up the beach at Hauxley Bay. I walked my spaniel there when I was forty five so what could be more appropriate than to watch Izzie like thousands of other lucky dogs before her run up and down hoping in vain to catch the wily seagulls?
At night when the tide is full the seabirds gather in their hundreds to feed and the moon rises about the North Sea. What better way to celebrate my sixty fifth birthday?
Thursday, 22 October 2015
Friday, 25 September 2015
Writing
When I was a little girl my mother used to take me to Woolworth's to buy toys. We had a decent amount of money and this was nothing unusual except that it was for me because I always headed straight for the stationery department. No wonder she thought I was odd. I was one of four. The others were always outside as we lived in the middle of nowhere. I was always upstairs, just as I am now, in my office. It was never the bedroom, despite the pink furniture, I filled it with books and pens and papers and used my kidney shaped dressing table as a desk. It was the only bedroom on the back of the house and I could watch the sun going down. When I got older one of my friends would join me there, put down the sliding sash window and we would hang out there smoking full strength capstan which my rather kept. My parents never tried to stop us smoking and drinking, they had more important things to think about. They fed us royally, loved us, educated us and kept us safe. It was a very good childhood which I did find rather difficult but writers always feel out of place and I was a writer before I was anything else.
I don't write letters much any more. Who does? Email is swift and efficient but I could never get through a day before turning to a notebook and pen. It's my Linus's blanket. Everything can go wrong but there is always writing.
I'm just starting another book. I spent three weeks waffling but now I have an idea and I'm doing lots of research about what kind of people were transported, what kind of quarries are there in Weardale and getting lost in the world of my own ideas. So much easier than the real world.
I do care very much about politics and what is going on but creative people have to slide away or they cannot work. I love to go away to this place where I write even though it is hard and frustrating and lonely. I can't do with people around too much, I need a big space into which to write.
This is my favourite time of year. I love to start writing in the run up to Christmas when the nights are clear and the frost is white on the fields and the cold wind nips at my ankles and the dusk comes in at around four. It's bliss for me. I am doing some research on W H Auden who spent a lot of time in Weardale. He hated warm weather and loved the howling gales in the this area and the relentless wind, rain, sleet and snow. Nice to think that he did. It's always my preference.
I'm going off to my caravan now, the best place to write. I have to make the best of it because it closes at the end of October but by then it's too cold to be comfortable up there and it's always something to look forward to when Easter arrives. I should be halfway through my novel by then and I'll be putting pen to paper every day, watching the half grown pheasants toddling around the caravans and the big black cattle stirring behind the caravan in the fields and bunnies bobbing up on the horizon before night settles in.
I don't write letters much any more. Who does? Email is swift and efficient but I could never get through a day before turning to a notebook and pen. It's my Linus's blanket. Everything can go wrong but there is always writing.
I'm just starting another book. I spent three weeks waffling but now I have an idea and I'm doing lots of research about what kind of people were transported, what kind of quarries are there in Weardale and getting lost in the world of my own ideas. So much easier than the real world.
I do care very much about politics and what is going on but creative people have to slide away or they cannot work. I love to go away to this place where I write even though it is hard and frustrating and lonely. I can't do with people around too much, I need a big space into which to write.
This is my favourite time of year. I love to start writing in the run up to Christmas when the nights are clear and the frost is white on the fields and the cold wind nips at my ankles and the dusk comes in at around four. It's bliss for me. I am doing some research on W H Auden who spent a lot of time in Weardale. He hated warm weather and loved the howling gales in the this area and the relentless wind, rain, sleet and snow. Nice to think that he did. It's always my preference.
I'm going off to my caravan now, the best place to write. I have to make the best of it because it closes at the end of October but by then it's too cold to be comfortable up there and it's always something to look forward to when Easter arrives. I should be halfway through my novel by then and I'll be putting pen to paper every day, watching the half grown pheasants toddling around the caravans and the big black cattle stirring behind the caravan in the fields and bunnies bobbing up on the horizon before night settles in.
Sunday, 23 August 2015
Doctor of the High Fells
My new book is out on Thursday August 27th, that's this week. My agent says it's the best thing I've done in years. She doesn't always say that. Actually the book I'm just finishing would never have been finished if it hadn't been for her. Thank God for agents and editors and all those people who never seem to get the credit. Books should be like films, with credits at the end, all those people who worked so hard, the people who design the cover, the printers, the on line folk, those who do the big print and audio books, the booksellers, the librarians, the secretaries who hold the publishing houses together, those people who have to decide how much the book should cost, whether it should be hardback or paperback or an ebook, the poor damned accountants who get blamed for everything,
A work of fiction is a team effort so next time you see the author think of all the other poor buggers who have to put with it all as well.
There is an element of luck with any published book. Sometimes it just takes off. We live in hope. The genres change, people have new ideas, some people have old-new ideas and it's difficult to tell which way the wind is blowing or whether you can make it blow your way.
I don't think at the moment there are many books with a woman doctor as the main character. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe there are but I didn't write it for that reason. I wrote it, as my agent would say, because it was the book only I could write. I longed to write it. I just hope people like it and that we didn't all sweat and work all that time for some mean bugger to think it's too expensive when the download is little more than a Starbucks' coffee.
Some people think nothing of paying forty quid for a pair of shoes but get upset when a book costs more than a fiver. You get a lot for your money with a book. It has a lot of mouths to feed and strangely we aren't doing it for the fun of it, we do expect to get paid. If people want me to write books for nothing I shall give up and stay in bed in the mornings and read a lot and eat more cream cakes. And be poor and not care. They are not getting me for nothing. The labourer is always worthy of his hire. Nobody should do stuff for nowt, not in business. It's false economy and of no use for our self respect.
I'm not a vain writer. I don't think I should have been Jane Austen or E.L.James. I don't mind that i'm not brilliant and that I'm not a millionaire.What the hell would I do with it all? I could give it to water aid of course. That's what I would do or like Catherine Cookson did and gave most of her money to the Newcastle hospitals. That's what a lot of money's for, I think.
Anyway, it is all right, the book, I laughed and cried over it, we all worked so hard. It isn't a work of genius, it's an honest attempt to get something right and to hope that somebody likes it.
I like the main character, Prue Stanhope, I admire how brave she is and that she does her best and that she's out there as woman all are. We've giving it rock all and that's what we can do.
So I do hope you might read and like it and if not there are thousands of other books out there and a whole load of other folk have sweated blood over them so go for something else, something you enjoy. I love to read crime. I'm happy with Peter May and Ian Rankin and Peter Robinson and a dozen more. They make my life better. They make me happy.
A work of fiction is a team effort so next time you see the author think of all the other poor buggers who have to put with it all as well.
There is an element of luck with any published book. Sometimes it just takes off. We live in hope. The genres change, people have new ideas, some people have old-new ideas and it's difficult to tell which way the wind is blowing or whether you can make it blow your way.
I don't think at the moment there are many books with a woman doctor as the main character. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe there are but I didn't write it for that reason. I wrote it, as my agent would say, because it was the book only I could write. I longed to write it. I just hope people like it and that we didn't all sweat and work all that time for some mean bugger to think it's too expensive when the download is little more than a Starbucks' coffee.
Some people think nothing of paying forty quid for a pair of shoes but get upset when a book costs more than a fiver. You get a lot for your money with a book. It has a lot of mouths to feed and strangely we aren't doing it for the fun of it, we do expect to get paid. If people want me to write books for nothing I shall give up and stay in bed in the mornings and read a lot and eat more cream cakes. And be poor and not care. They are not getting me for nothing. The labourer is always worthy of his hire. Nobody should do stuff for nowt, not in business. It's false economy and of no use for our self respect.
I'm not a vain writer. I don't think I should have been Jane Austen or E.L.James. I don't mind that i'm not brilliant and that I'm not a millionaire.What the hell would I do with it all? I could give it to water aid of course. That's what I would do or like Catherine Cookson did and gave most of her money to the Newcastle hospitals. That's what a lot of money's for, I think.
Anyway, it is all right, the book, I laughed and cried over it, we all worked so hard. It isn't a work of genius, it's an honest attempt to get something right and to hope that somebody likes it.
I like the main character, Prue Stanhope, I admire how brave she is and that she does her best and that she's out there as woman all are. We've giving it rock all and that's what we can do.
So I do hope you might read and like it and if not there are thousands of other books out there and a whole load of other folk have sweated blood over them so go for something else, something you enjoy. I love to read crime. I'm happy with Peter May and Ian Rankin and Peter Robinson and a dozen more. They make my life better. They make me happy.
Tuesday, 4 August 2015
Oh God, a Labrador
Our first dog was a black labrador, called Rex. I was very young at the time. I remember my mother on being told that it had been run over. She was the only one of us who wept, I can remember getting on with my fish and chips, quite unmoved. After that there was a boxer, that got run over eventually too. Those days dogs were not pampered, they were free to roam. The third one, when I got a bit older, was Sherry. She used to run up and down the Northumberland beaches so that when we came home she would sulk in the shower.
I didn't want any more dogs so many years later when my husband, who use to shoot, insisted on having a black labrador, I could not contain my mirth as it threw up all over our smart yellow sports car.
After that there was Jasper, half labrador, half springer spaniel and then Timmy, fully springer spaniel, and like many aristocrats, good pedigree but quite stupid.
I still suffer from being left with the damned dogs when my husband died. George collapsed of old age and had to be put down a year or so later, Jasper went into a decline, missing Richard and I sent him off to a Yorkshire estate so that he could work and I kept the last dog.
I shall never forget the day they came to take Jasper away. I remember him watching me from the back of the car. But he was not meant to be a lap dog. He was the dog who swam widths of the loch all week when we went to Scotland. We named him Wilkie Jasper. Everything good in my life seemed over when I had to give up that dog because he loved the shooting so much.
Dogless I remained, so my emotions when my daughter rang earlier to say she had bought a yellow labrador were so hard. In vain had I told her that it could not be left, that it would need walking ten miles a day, that it would throw up in the hall, crap in the bedrooms and leave hair all over the sofa. I told her that I would have nothing to do with it, that it could not be left for holidays with me when she went to top up her tan.
Like all children, she hasn't taken a blind bit of notice, so I'm sitting here crying now for all those days of my dogs, for the days when my husband used to try and cuddle them all together. He would say,
'My boys, my boys,' and laugh over them.
On the last day of his short life we took our little girl and our dogs to Fountains Abbey and walked through the woods where he named the trees for her and the dogs frolicked about and played.
The new labrador is called Izzie. Which presumably is short for Isabel which is another name for Elizabeth. Well, I don't suppose there's anything in that, other than the fact that my daughter has moved on, dog wise and that's lovely but I still can't wait for the first time that it throws up in her new Mercedes. I really can't.
I didn't want any more dogs so many years later when my husband, who use to shoot, insisted on having a black labrador, I could not contain my mirth as it threw up all over our smart yellow sports car.
After that there was Jasper, half labrador, half springer spaniel and then Timmy, fully springer spaniel, and like many aristocrats, good pedigree but quite stupid.
I still suffer from being left with the damned dogs when my husband died. George collapsed of old age and had to be put down a year or so later, Jasper went into a decline, missing Richard and I sent him off to a Yorkshire estate so that he could work and I kept the last dog.
I shall never forget the day they came to take Jasper away. I remember him watching me from the back of the car. But he was not meant to be a lap dog. He was the dog who swam widths of the loch all week when we went to Scotland. We named him Wilkie Jasper. Everything good in my life seemed over when I had to give up that dog because he loved the shooting so much.
Dogless I remained, so my emotions when my daughter rang earlier to say she had bought a yellow labrador were so hard. In vain had I told her that it could not be left, that it would need walking ten miles a day, that it would throw up in the hall, crap in the bedrooms and leave hair all over the sofa. I told her that I would have nothing to do with it, that it could not be left for holidays with me when she went to top up her tan.
Like all children, she hasn't taken a blind bit of notice, so I'm sitting here crying now for all those days of my dogs, for the days when my husband used to try and cuddle them all together. He would say,
'My boys, my boys,' and laugh over them.
On the last day of his short life we took our little girl and our dogs to Fountains Abbey and walked through the woods where he named the trees for her and the dogs frolicked about and played.
The new labrador is called Izzie. Which presumably is short for Isabel which is another name for Elizabeth. Well, I don't suppose there's anything in that, other than the fact that my daughter has moved on, dog wise and that's lovely but I still can't wait for the first time that it throws up in her new Mercedes. I really can't.
Sunday, 5 July 2015
Bitten, Burned and Burgered - How not to go on holiday
When I first announced to my friends that I was going on holiday
to Miami one said,
'Do you know how hot it is?' and another,
'Top Miami hotels are very elegant, Liz.' Hmm.
I do not like the heat. I owe my almost pale blue skin to my Irish ancestry. When it's cold and wet most of the time it does not equip you for oven temperature muggy heat. Also I can be called a lot of things but 'gym bunny' and 'sun worshipper' are not among them.
There were other older people at the hotel but not many and hardest of all for me is that no one in such a place appreciates my Eeyore impression. I learned very quickly that bouncing up to people and speaking to them does not mean a positive response. I got a good many stares.
A great many people here speak Spanish as their first language so a very pale woman with a weird British accent is worrying.
Miami is all about money. Even in Cheshire I have not see such an abidance of enormous flash and shiny cars.
The other thing is that you tip everybody. If you don't get this right they might, as one ill advised gentleman, run after you as you leave the restaurant, complaining that he needs a bigger tip as he get so badly paid.
One of the joys of a hotel like the one we went to was that nobody until the age if seventeen was allowed.Handbags dogs however are cool here. I blame Reese Witherspoon,
Alcohol is not a good idea with weather like this. Lots of water is the only way forward. I hate water! The food is mostly good for you so I did not put on weight even though I ate for England.
'Hey, you guys'. Two countries divided by a single language.
The culture here is as foreign to me as anywhere I have been. I would hate to live in a place where there are no seasons but what the hell - the sky was blue and white with fluffy clouds, the sea really is aquamarine, there's nobody about and I spent most of my time lying on a sunbed in the shade by one of the loveliest views I have ever seen across the bay. I saw a school of dolphins one day like this.
I went to a fantastic sushi bar twice and saw that lovely part of Miami where the buildings are art deco.
We never ate before nine pm which I love doing, the later the better. Every meal was outside and I wore long dresses, with thin straps and diamonded sandals. Gorgeous hotels had lights outside reflected in pools.
Back at the hotel iced water is brought to my shaded sunbed. My room is air conditioned, my bed is bliss and I am so slick with sun cream that small insects can skate down my legs.
Snobby person that I may be, I might write popular novels but I rarely read them for pleasure. I make money, not history but I was on a beach holiday so I read Funny Girl by Nicky Hornby - good ending, The Heat of Betrayal by Douglas Kennedy, good, but could have been shorter and The Paying Guests by Sarah Waters. She writes well and I might pinch the basic idea.
One day I had a mud bath, covered in pink gunge and plunged into a huge ornamental bath of tepid water and hosed off. Iced coffee to follow. Lots of wallpaper music to chill one further.
Back at home now I am still in recovery but happy because I've been away. I missed good music, cool mornings and I feel as if the summer is only just beginning.
to Miami one said,
'Do you know how hot it is?' and another,
'Top Miami hotels are very elegant, Liz.' Hmm.
I do not like the heat. I owe my almost pale blue skin to my Irish ancestry. When it's cold and wet most of the time it does not equip you for oven temperature muggy heat. Also I can be called a lot of things but 'gym bunny' and 'sun worshipper' are not among them.
There were other older people at the hotel but not many and hardest of all for me is that no one in such a place appreciates my Eeyore impression. I learned very quickly that bouncing up to people and speaking to them does not mean a positive response. I got a good many stares.
A great many people here speak Spanish as their first language so a very pale woman with a weird British accent is worrying.
Miami is all about money. Even in Cheshire I have not see such an abidance of enormous flash and shiny cars.
The other thing is that you tip everybody. If you don't get this right they might, as one ill advised gentleman, run after you as you leave the restaurant, complaining that he needs a bigger tip as he get so badly paid.
One of the joys of a hotel like the one we went to was that nobody until the age if seventeen was allowed.Handbags dogs however are cool here. I blame Reese Witherspoon,
Alcohol is not a good idea with weather like this. Lots of water is the only way forward. I hate water! The food is mostly good for you so I did not put on weight even though I ate for England.
'Hey, you guys'. Two countries divided by a single language.
The culture here is as foreign to me as anywhere I have been. I would hate to live in a place where there are no seasons but what the hell - the sky was blue and white with fluffy clouds, the sea really is aquamarine, there's nobody about and I spent most of my time lying on a sunbed in the shade by one of the loveliest views I have ever seen across the bay. I saw a school of dolphins one day like this.
I went to a fantastic sushi bar twice and saw that lovely part of Miami where the buildings are art deco.
We never ate before nine pm which I love doing, the later the better. Every meal was outside and I wore long dresses, with thin straps and diamonded sandals. Gorgeous hotels had lights outside reflected in pools.
Back at the hotel iced water is brought to my shaded sunbed. My room is air conditioned, my bed is bliss and I am so slick with sun cream that small insects can skate down my legs.
Snobby person that I may be, I might write popular novels but I rarely read them for pleasure. I make money, not history but I was on a beach holiday so I read Funny Girl by Nicky Hornby - good ending, The Heat of Betrayal by Douglas Kennedy, good, but could have been shorter and The Paying Guests by Sarah Waters. She writes well and I might pinch the basic idea.
One day I had a mud bath, covered in pink gunge and plunged into a huge ornamental bath of tepid water and hosed off. Iced coffee to follow. Lots of wallpaper music to chill one further.
Back at home now I am still in recovery but happy because I've been away. I missed good music, cool mornings and I feel as if the summer is only just beginning.
Thursday, 28 May 2015
Would You Marry a Genius?
Watching the film about Stephen Hawking and his wife, I got to thinking that she had a really rough deal but they met in 1963 and it was a different world then. Would any woman marry a man who had such a disease and give up so much for him now? I know she was very religious but she was also a brilliant woman and yet she married him, thinking he would soon die and having three children to him and no doubt running around like a headless chicken trying to pull it all together.
Was it because she loved him? Well, obviously it was but how much of that love is pure self sacrifice? How much self sacrifice is good? Women are wonderful at it and not very good at making men sacrifice anything for them. How many nurses in the past would have made good doctors? How many women had half a dozen children and wanted to help rule the world? How unfortunate that now we are still self sacrificing, we are still having those children and trying to rule the world as well and feeling that worn down mood that can become your whole life.
I know that having children is utter hell and bliss both together and having that kind of unconditional love which you get only from small children and dogs is great but the world is big and wide and a little more selfishness would not come in wrong. Be a cat. Care about you.
I was thinking also this week about Martha and Mary. It irritates the hell out of me. There Mary is sitting on her arse listening to Jesus and Martha is doing all the work and he has the audacity to tell her to sit down and shut up. I would have had him sorted out in no time.
I love the book by Colm Toibin, set from Jesus's mother's viewpoint. It's so refreshing. She can't understand what the hell is going on. Who does he think he is? The Testament of Mary, it's called. The mother's view of her jumped up son. Sons. Hell. They bugger off and leave you or worse still they don't. I'm sure a lot of them think they're the son of God. I'm all for Martha telling Jesus that he gets to do the washing up!
Pick up your bed and walk, girls.
Was it because she loved him? Well, obviously it was but how much of that love is pure self sacrifice? How much self sacrifice is good? Women are wonderful at it and not very good at making men sacrifice anything for them. How many nurses in the past would have made good doctors? How many women had half a dozen children and wanted to help rule the world? How unfortunate that now we are still self sacrificing, we are still having those children and trying to rule the world as well and feeling that worn down mood that can become your whole life.
I know that having children is utter hell and bliss both together and having that kind of unconditional love which you get only from small children and dogs is great but the world is big and wide and a little more selfishness would not come in wrong. Be a cat. Care about you.
I was thinking also this week about Martha and Mary. It irritates the hell out of me. There Mary is sitting on her arse listening to Jesus and Martha is doing all the work and he has the audacity to tell her to sit down and shut up. I would have had him sorted out in no time.
I love the book by Colm Toibin, set from Jesus's mother's viewpoint. It's so refreshing. She can't understand what the hell is going on. Who does he think he is? The Testament of Mary, it's called. The mother's view of her jumped up son. Sons. Hell. They bugger off and leave you or worse still they don't. I'm sure a lot of them think they're the son of God. I'm all for Martha telling Jesus that he gets to do the washing up!
Pick up your bed and walk, girls.
Friday, 15 May 2015
Don't panic, Captain Mannering!
I had a panic attack last night. One moment I was eating a perfectly good meal, of lamb and rice, since you ask, and the next I was coughing, shaking and throwing up. I've been doing that quite a lot lately.
I used to pass out. I didn't know that I was feeling so bad about my life, that it had all become so very heavy to deal with, that my body couldn't cope any longer. I would choke, stop breathing and then slide down the wall if I could reach one in time. The passing out is such a relief except for the time when I passed out in the kitchen and banged my head off the radiator.
I can remember sliding down the wall of a rented cottage in the middle of a thunderstorm when the lightning fired up and down the electric cables and I woke up to find my spaniel standing over me like a puzzled nurse in the hall.
I didn't know that panic attacks vary. I assumed they were all the same.
I'm going to the opera twice next week. I will take my courage and sit in the middle of the row somewhere close to the front and it's always a big test because I'm much more likely to choke and run at a live performance. I cough and can't breathe, I can't drink water, it makes it worse. I have to try and take control of my breathing, close my eyes and envisage the road between Durham and Stanhope and breathe slowly in while sticking my stomach out and then out while pulling my stomach in.
When I do this the tears stream down my face. I had to stop wearing eye make up, it ended up all over my wet cheeks. If the attack is really bad I have to get up and run out, which is why I sit in the middle of the row because if I bolt I've disturbed everybody, made a spectacle of myself and lost that evening's battle. And if I run out it makes the next occasion so much harder.
Worst of all is having a panic attack at home. Most people feel safe in their houses. That's Crawl Into Bed Time, the only good thing about it being that it might happen on a sunny afternoon, the bed all light and warm. That's my idea of safety and then I listen to my audio books and remember how to breathe again.
I used to pass out. I didn't know that I was feeling so bad about my life, that it had all become so very heavy to deal with, that my body couldn't cope any longer. I would choke, stop breathing and then slide down the wall if I could reach one in time. The passing out is such a relief except for the time when I passed out in the kitchen and banged my head off the radiator.
I can remember sliding down the wall of a rented cottage in the middle of a thunderstorm when the lightning fired up and down the electric cables and I woke up to find my spaniel standing over me like a puzzled nurse in the hall.
I didn't know that panic attacks vary. I assumed they were all the same.
I'm going to the opera twice next week. I will take my courage and sit in the middle of the row somewhere close to the front and it's always a big test because I'm much more likely to choke and run at a live performance. I cough and can't breathe, I can't drink water, it makes it worse. I have to try and take control of my breathing, close my eyes and envisage the road between Durham and Stanhope and breathe slowly in while sticking my stomach out and then out while pulling my stomach in.
When I do this the tears stream down my face. I had to stop wearing eye make up, it ended up all over my wet cheeks. If the attack is really bad I have to get up and run out, which is why I sit in the middle of the row because if I bolt I've disturbed everybody, made a spectacle of myself and lost that evening's battle. And if I run out it makes the next occasion so much harder.
Worst of all is having a panic attack at home. Most people feel safe in their houses. That's Crawl Into Bed Time, the only good thing about it being that it might happen on a sunny afternoon, the bed all light and warm. That's my idea of safety and then I listen to my audio books and remember how to breathe again.
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