ISN'T IT

One rainy afternoon, when I was no more than five years old, I curled up on the stairs leading to my parents' third-floor bedroom. Afraid of my own breathing, I listened to, and speculated upon, their row.

I do not remember the precise words that were spat out, or even the cause of their joint anger. What I have no difficulty in recalling, however, is the tone of my parents' voices, the snide-y, sneer-y, jeer-y-ness of their words, and the way their vocal expressions conveyed a sort of hatred.

I prayed (to myself? to God? - I'm undecided)...

'Please don't let Mummy and Daddy hate each other. Please don't let them be Divorced'.

As a child, 'divorce' struck so much fear into my heart that it seemed almost worse than that other dreaded D-word. As an adult, divorce seems a preferable state of affairs in comparison to a joyless marriage.

So fifteen years on, I sit on the rug by the fire, absorbing Damien Rice or Ryan Adams whilst the endless sky just rains on and on. And I listen to those words all over again.

How can two people whose lives are so profoundly entwined utter those most hurtful and hateful of sentiments to each other?

It is my belief that it is the people to whom you are closest who are most capable of issuing that mortal wound.

Now that's what you call ironic.

FRUIT SALAD

I didn't really think before the creation of this blog.

Inspired by the brilliant musings of Petite Anglaise, I just lunged into it. Now, after receiving the first comment for my first post, I feel somewhat paralysed by the idea that someone, somewhere may stumble across sentences and paragraphs of my own composition, and actually read them. It fills me with a terrible sense of self-consciousness.

Who am I writing for?
One unknown, invisible reader?
One hundred unknown, invisible readers?
The infinite abyss that is 'the Internet'?

Or maybe, just myself. After a year where nothing of much significance happened directly to me, where instead, I merely observed the births, lives and deaths of others, and of others' others; perhaps I should endeavour to live purely for myself.

And thus follows my resolution for 2007: I shall attempt to live life, to be of it; rather than just watch it cascade past me in slow motion.

On another note entirely, after an intimate late night coffee-in-a-cafe session with my best friend, we concluded that the most interesting question one can ever enquire of a new acquaintance is:

What kind of fruit are you?

I know what I am: pomegranate
And I know what I need//want: orange

Happy New Year Reader - if indeed, you are there.

DELUSIONED ANGEL, FANTASY PARADE

One of my most favourite films ever is Breakfast at Tiffany's.

I first watched it about three years ago, and from the iconic opening shot in which you glimpse Holly Golightly (played by Audrey Hepburn) gazing at the jewellery in Tiffany's, I was utterly hooked. It is impossible not to fall for the irresistible Holly Golightly. Her glamour, elegance and buoyancy, juxtaposed against a sort of precious vulnerability, make for one of the most engaging, intoxicating heroines of any 'romantic' film. So anyway, I love it.

My favourite scene is the closing one. After a dramatic fight in a taxi (all good conversations happen in taxis, have you ever noticed that?), the witty, handsome, but unfortunately, impoverished writer Paul Varjak (played by George Peppard), declares to Holly:

"You know what's wrong with you, Miss Whoever-You-Are? You're chicken. You got no guts. You're afraid to say... ok life's a fact. People do fall in love. People do belong to each other because that's the only chance anybody's got for real happiness."

And then the impassioned George Peppard sweeps up Audrey Hepburn and they stand on the streets of New York, kissing in the rain. (I am convinced this is the moment from which all those 'kissing in the rain is so romantic' cliches originate. It is also clearly the inspiration for the kiss-in-the-rain scene at the end of Four Weddings and a Funeral.) Essentially, all ends well. They live 'happily ever after'.

I know it's only a film, and it's not real blahblahblah.. But somehow I had a lot of faith in that quotation - in the whole story, in fact. It gave me hope that in the end, things are ok. And today, whilst sitting reading on an icy cold bus fighting its rattling way through both the unstoppable Liverpool traffic, and the endless rainstorm that has descended upon Merseyside this week, my faith was absolutely and utterly crushed.

This morning I bought Truman Capote's original novella, from which the film is adapted. His writing is crystalline - very eloquent, very beautiful and very fragile.It is almost identical to the film, with much of the dialogue exactly the same. However, there is one vital difference. The ending...

There is no happy ending.

Capote's novella ends brutally. Holly Golightly runs away to Buenos Aires to be entrapped by yet another married 'Senor', whilst Paul Varjak is left, bereft, in New York, still writing, still mourning the heartbreaker Holly. He is consoled only by the thought that at least, at last, the nameless Cat has found a home "seated in the window of a warm-looking room" and "flanked by potted plants and framed by clean lace curtains".

And that's it. The story ends. And it’s not ok.

The realisation that the love story that I have loved to love could actually finish without love was (and maybe I exaggerate, but hey, I do that a lot...)...devastating. The only thing to which I can liken it is that instant as a child when you suddenly comprehend that Father Christmas is not real. All those years of your parents' ploys to enact the Christmas myth were just one great big lie. It's that moment when you acknowledge that love is only temporary. And much as you want to "give someone your forever"; forever does not really exist. It's an illusion. A lie. Maybe one with good intentions and a lot of hope. But still, a lie.

My inner old romantic is steadily being usurped by a new and tremendously bitter cynic. And I don't think I like it.

I hope no-one else has been disappointed today.