Currently writing on a French keyboard.  Totally screwed up, it's an azertyboard and consequently I've only just found the apostrophe - thank god for that, it was driving me completely MENTAL.

 

As France has been.

 

I'm back on Monday evening, the ferry's at 8 so god knows when I'll be actually home.  Be talkable to from Tuesday onwards but busy kayaking and/or flying birds of prey at the inhabitants of Andover until Thursday.

 

I'm dying for a fry-up.  France is a lovely place, with lovely food, culture, people, but I miss so much about England it's horrible to contemplate.  Let me share with you a list I wrote a few days ago:

 

Street signs not in italics

Quote Unquote

Things in ounces and miles and inches and pounds sterling

The shipping forecast (I am a self-confessed shipping forecast freak)

BBC2

Radio 1

W H Smiths

Train tickets bought from someone in the proper uniform

Emos

The chimes

The Vicar of Dibley

Fry-ups

The Top 40 singles chart

Books grandly referred to as 'Classics'

 

You can tell I am missing you lot HUGELY.  I found a computer in the hotel this afternoon, hence where I am now, so I'm sorry if you lot want conversation.  Besides, this keyboard is WARPED.  I'll be home in a few days... I'm missing conversation SO DAMN MUCH... if you want to leave me a message on MySpace or my mobile or here or something, all would be very welcome.  I just feel a bit isolated, that's all.

 

Enough done.  Better go.  Vive la France, just as long as they leave it over here.

 

I'm multicultural, me.

To France.  I have to be up at 5am tomorrow.

 

Til the end of the month.  The likelihood is that I'll be out of touch til then.  I'll be doing a lot of reading, a lot of writing... and probably very little speaking.  French isn't really my forte, although I have been and am attempting to learn a bit of it, just to get by.  Plus it sounds good to say offhand, "Oh, I taught myself French, y'know?"  But I won't be speaking much in any language, I think.  I'm going to have two and a half weeks of listening, and quiet.  A rest from understanding.

 

I also intend to do some letter writing.  To Charity, mainly, because I haven't written to her in an age.  But also to other people, letters that I have no intention of sending unless I have been out of contact with the people in question for three months.  I've written one already, and it covers two pages in tiny writing.  More of the same, I think.

 

To clarify for some people, and so that you don't have to ask/try and persuade me AGAIN: next term, I AM GOING TO PETER SYMONDS.  I am not, repeat NOT, returning to KES.  It is difficult to leave it behind, I was at the school on Monday and again on Tuesday and on Monday I ended up in the concourse for a minute.  I was trying to avoid the Dobson.  I know if I go in there I won't be able to hold firm.  I was nearly in tears as I was leaving as it was.  Do not, repeat NOT, try to persuade me to go back.  I will just snap at you.  I have chosen and I have chosen what is right for me.  This is aimed particularly at D.  School is not the be-all and end-all.

 

On Monday I went up to London.  I feel exultant, alone, in control of my own fate.  I had from ten o'clock when I first got onto the train to half past three when Mum rang to say she'd finished her meeting, all of my own, by myself, for myself in a place with the most curious mix of the impersonal and the intimate that I have ever come across.  I drank it in.  If I have a destiny, which I don't believe I do, then London features in it somewhere.  Maybe everyone is drawn to it, but I know I am, like a moth to a flame.

 

"One is one and all alone and evermore shall be so."

 

When I get home, I can guarantee I will have had enough of grandeur in isolation.  Friends make the world go around.  I wouldn't exchange you for the world.  Any of you.

I have realised something.  Just this minute.

 

I have never been in a crisis.  Most of the things that happen to me that are bad I have imagined, and they happen to my persona instead of me, and they aren't real anyway.  I have written them.  I go on about hopes and fears and how awful it is to feel so isolated when really... I have never been isolated.  I have felt it, sure, but haven't we all?

 

Sometimes it is difficult to admit that nothing is going wrong, especially when so many people seem to have so much to cope with.  It is just my quiet perfect little life.  It is a bit constricting to be honest, because there are things that I can't begin to understand, thoughts, emotions, and really sometimes it'd be very useful to be truly empathetic as opposed to relying on my imagination.  I feel like such a fraud sometimes.

 

But that's about the worst I get.

 

I wish I could shoulder some of other people's stuff, I wish I could cry for them so that they could have a moment, just a moment, where they know they're okay.

 

Failure is an event, not a person, and like every event at the end of the day you have to pack up the marquee, hand out the last raffle prizes and MOVE ON.

 

One day I will have to start to deal with things and it will be a SHOCK.

 

That's why my dream job is one of the most stressful, empathetic ones I can imagine.  Perfect.

It has to be said.

 

Doesn't top end of last series which was pretty damn fantastic, but still.  I liked it.  There was a satisfying amount of what is technically called Blowing Shit Up, Andrew got his five minutes of glory, as did the Sonic Screwdriver (oh go on you know you love it) and they didn't over-soppy Rose's departure while still maintaining that she did not actually die so that all the 10-year-olds who secretly had crushes on her (of which I know... two) can still dream.  I am impressed.

 

Plus I don't know about you but I thought Daleks and Cybermen hurling insults at each other was hilarious.

 

 

 

So much has happened in the last... week.  I don't think I'll go into it all.  I have such a headache from today.  One of my favourite books in all the world has renewed my confidence in myself in a way that is improbable and entirely welcome.  I have grown more into Rebecca every day.  "That was before I taught myself to grow."  I am growing.  I am teaching myself.  I have learnt.  The only way you can win is ABSOLUTE FAITH IN YOUR OWN ABILITIES.  If you have that, you can do anything.  That is the truth.

 

And, all the time, it was a cancer.  All the time, she was totally alone.

 

You and I differ, Rebecca.  I may name myself after you, I may follow your example, but we differ.  We differ in that my happy ending is not my own.  And that is why, eventually, you lost.

 

I do not lose, because it is not on my own behalf.  That is your weakness, and my gain.

 

I do not lose, and I do not let my friends lose.

 

 

 

I could never have left it, least of all last night.  We will not lose, and it is a We.  I am behind you whenever you need it.

 

 

 

Nobody does that and gets away with it.