why is it you always want to be alone when people are around? Right now I'm hiding in the dim lit corner of my bedroom. It's the only bit of my room where I can put my feet straight onto the floorboards, I seem to be rolling around in heaps of clothes at the minute. Anyway, my mum is having this BBQ downstairs for her men's choir and their missus. My dad is lavishing playing with his new gas barbie, earlier it went up in flames and he went 'WAHEEEY! WHO NEEDS EYEBROWS ANYWAY?!' and then he laughed.
There's a queue of men waiting for meat, each of them politely asking me what I've done this year and what I'm planning to do. A couple of them laugh about my lack of science knowledge, or ask me if I too, am a musician. I'm ashamed I'm not more musically able. But then I suppose what do you expect if you've spent your whole life with mummy and daddy saying 'don't be a singer Poppy'. I don't mind chatting to them, it's something I'm quite comfortable doing now. But I no longer feel like I can just go up to people and chat anymore.
So I sit and stroke Spud who's given up on trying to bark at everyone and is lying disconsolate on the kitchen floorboards, taking up crucial space so everyone has to step cautiously over him to get to anywhere. He's also about a foot from some remaining broken glass from where I chipped one earlier.
Mum is wandering around, in her element, purple/blue ended hair which she lavishly plays with sometimes, and by watching her I can tell she's thinking about how much she loves it. She stands in her typical way, her hips forward, legs apart, one hand on her hip, other up by her mouth, maybe chewing her lip. She's either frowning, listening intently, laughing like a hyena or talking about one of her many societies of singers. How many is it she has now? 7? 8? I can't remember.
What makes me smile, is I can occasionally hear snippets of conversation from people, and it completely clicks with what mum has said about them before. I heard one wife say 'I can't get him to eat anything green...' which makes me smile. Then there's the endless puddings. Any one would be lovely, but I just can't fathom eating any when they're all together. It's like in primary school, when you don't really trust your friend if they give you a crisp, because you feel gross taking their food with their germs. But you want the wotsit, so you suffer in silence.
The shed up the garden has just had a major tidy. It was an abyss of ivy, spiders webs and soil. Now it's a gorgeous little wooden cabin, with fairy lights, candles, an easel and a bench. I might go and read in there. It's always lovely because it's quite literally the last window in my house than can see the sun at the end of the day. It sets, right in front of the window pane. It's always reeking of that sort of soft sadness of the end of the day.
I wish sunsets would last forever.
I'm going to go and read my book.
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