what love means

'You could say this was an independent lovesong, it's nothing like to us what love meant to them' - Scarlet, Independent Love Song

What do you write when you have nothing to say? Usually very talkative, I've found myself saying less and less recently. I'm dumbstruck. Maybe it has to do with the amount of things I need to do, that I wake up and my head spins with the sheer amount of stuff that's in there. My friend suggested I keep a notebook next to the bed and write down everything I think about so I can empty it all out. Thing is, I'd be writing all night and filling it with things like 'change hairdresser appointment' or 'buy new washing powder'.

Conversely, I feel I can't write anything else. No fiction, no made-up stories, no real life stories. I've had so much I could have written about. Countless opportunities to describe my life, the day to day stuff that people, accidental (disaster) tourists like you, like to read. Everything that could be interesting seems to be blanketed in the mundane. Who wants to read about the mundane?

Today's list of the mundane, sprinkled here and there with the truly wonderful.

1. Results of car accident = whiplash. 6 - 8 weeks recovery time. Ouch.
   
   
2. A new bicycle and a new linen shirt. Bought a new bike for where I stay in Utrecht part of the week. Sadly dissuaded from the hot pink version and conformed with uniform black. But hey, the brakes and the light work.
   
   My new linen shirt is gunmetal grey, neither black nor hot pink. Gunmetal is my new favourite colour, but it doesn't look as good on me as it does on my favourite blonde.
   
   
3. Sunshine. Lying in the park reading the papers and falling asleep on the grass. I took my jeans off from under my dress and lay with my legs bare against the grass and remembered what it was like to be a little girl. My friend, Belinda, and I used to take turns to tickle each other with blades of grass while we sat on the school field at break times. I would close my eyes and she would tickle up my inner arm with a blade of grass and I'd have to say when she reached my elbow. Then we'd swap. Do kids still do these thing?
   
   
4. World Press Photo exhibition.  I wandered through all the photos mostly untouched. How many photos of Iraqis and Afghans and women under the Taliban and starving children have we all seen?
   
   My heart is stone.
   
   So I walked and looked and then I came to a photo taken by a Zimbabwean photographer named Bold Hungwe. It depicts a scene with a shoe flung skywards as a man runs from watercannons and teargas. I stood in front of a landscape I knew, with people I might have known, and ice ran up my spine.
   
   Maybe we only truly become better people when we can look at another human being's suffering and not need a contextual association? Perhaps we only reach the pinnacle of humanity, the best we can be, when we are touched by events which have no personal connotations for us, no identifying with the deceased or the tormented?  I don't know, but I'm not there. I still need a context. Maybe it's just self-defence.
   
   The photos were excellent but the images of misery and the futile nature of life left us curiously depressed and needing a drink and a lie-down. The exhibition is running at the Oudekerk in Amsterdam until 22 June. After that it might be coming to somewhere near you.
   
   
5. Scrabulous. I'm playing Scrabble on facebook with a friend who likes to play like me! No two letter bullshit words. Real words like obviate (except I couldn't make that one because I had an H instead of a T) and triple word scores and messages to say 'I got you!' Lovely.
   
   Scrabble is surely all about being the cleverer one. The one who can think up long and complicated words and then preen when the right letters come up? Speaking two languages diminishes the first language though. I have much fewer words than I had before I spoke fluent Dutch. Nice excuse, isn't it?
   
   
6. Letting go. I deleted all my inactive phone numbers. I cleaned up my facebook. I threw away all the bags of clothes in the basement. I am starting with paper next. Do I really need that receipt dated 2 June 1997 for some computer hardware that is now defunct? Will I feel all free when it's all done?
   
   
7. Books. I'm reading Nicole Krauss' History of Love right now. I just finished reading David Baddiel's Whatever Love Means. In between I read 'I Feel Bad about my Neck' by Nora Ephron.
   
   Whatever Love Means was astonishingly good. I started off thinking it was some boy-lit kind of thing. You know, bloke screws around, finds girl who changes his opinions, blah blah blah, but it's not.
   
   It's based around the death of Princess Diana and the affair that Vic, the protagonist starts with his best friend's wife, Emma. There's a curious twist at the end when you really do ask yourself what love really means and the question seems to stay with you.
   
   When I was at the GP's office after the accident and he found some neurological problems in my left hand, left field of vision and my hearing in my left ear, I suddenly thought about what love really meant. Would love mean walking away if I had some horrible neurological damage?
   
   I suppose that intrinsically, because I've been brought up with a very stiff upper lip, love for me means not burdening anyone else with my problems or expecting anyone else to solve them, so in a sense I would walk away. The more I care, the less I ask of a person. Conversely, love for me means embracing, not just accepting, the other person's problems or ill-health or stress at work or simple ill-tempered bloody-mindedness. So I want to embrace someone else's differences and spare them mine? And they say it's a sign of intelligence to be able to hold two opposing views simultaneously?
   
   
8. Charlotte's Guide to Bores. Fantastic. I think she needs to publish some flash cards for hauling out of your pockets when each specific kind of bore is standing in front of you. I've been stuck with the Enthusiast more times than I can tell. The last notable time was at a party where I got stuck talking to a bloke about taps. Yes, faucets. Those things from which water spews forth. And spew he did, lengthily. Even my attempts to move the conversation onto something more dirty than water, (he was a man after all), were swiftly turned back to the intricacies of importing German taps into Holland.
   
   So, if you're an Enthusiast and you've been talking to someone for two hours and they say suddenly, 'I'm sorry, I can't take it anymore' and get up and leave, it's really time to start reading your audience a bit better.
   
   I have simple advice for how not to be boring - make other people talk about themselves. They'll remember you as scintillating witty and charming. You, however, might end up listening to someone talk about taps all night. It's a risk you have to be willing to take.
   
   
9. Merging. Traffic, life, work. If I had to categorise the style in which I navigate my life it'd be that of a highway driver. Once I'm in my lane I'm happy as Larry, but when I need to take an exit my palms sweat, my blood pressure rises, my hazard lights come on. Unexpected diversions or difficult choices and my equilibrium disappears. I thought I'd gotten better at making choices but presented with a list of them this week following
   my accident I fear I'm no better than I used to be.
   
   
10. Barbecues. Mmmm, it's barbecue time again. Here's my favourite marinade recipe:
    
    Nigella's Salt and Pepper Marinade
    
    2 tablespoons Maldon salt
    4 cloves garlic
    2 tablespoons pink or white peppercorns. I use that mixed peppercorn stuff that has some pimento or something in it. It's the sadist in me.
    60 ml olive oil
    2 tablespoons lemon juice
    
    Crush the salt and peeled garlic cloves in a pestle and mortar until it goes all thick and gooey. Add the peppercorns and crush some more, then add the lemon juice and oil. Pour into a freezer bag and then add about a kilo of chicken wings. I usually don't measure carefully and I just throw stuff in. A bit of chilli sauce is also really good added to this.
    

Now I'm taking my headache back to bed.