a road without earth's road-dust

This is probably the last time I will ever live in my parents' house for a prolonged period of time. (That is, two months rather than say, two weeks.) Even with that said, I'm about to run off to Oxford and then to San Francisco and then to Dublin and then to Edinburgh. The times they are a-changin' and all of that, and it's something to note, I think, because this August, my family will have lived here for ten years. (I was born in Liverpool proper - on Hope Street - was there until 1989, then lived on the Wirral for nine years, and then here. Basically, we moved around but I've always lived on Merseyside.) And even if I don't want to stay for good, I've loved living here. So, last week I waited for a sunny day, took the camera and went for a walk.

( a day at the beach )

And that's it, I guess. Pretty soon I return to a city with two rivers and very few bridges, and a very different kind of natural beauty. And this time it's likely more permanent. But, I lived here, I will always be from this place, there will always be something of it in me. (Beyond a tendency to gabble when I'm nervous and call everyone "love", I mean.) Something of the saltwater and distance.

Notes and queries:

I have a banging monster of a tension headache that has so far not been alleviated by painkillers, enormous glasses of water and therapeutic shouting. I have to be up to get my laundry out. I may sit in the bath until then, having spent the last five or six hours being hugely, grossly productive. (Seriously. I got up. I went to work. I came back from work. I got rained on. I proof-read and got five training contract applications ready to submit. Packed a suitcase. Found tickets, insurance, passport and American dollars. Started work on application to the GLS. Did not cry. Put laundry in. Am now eating ice-cream and waiting for laundry to re-emerge.)

(Pause, as mum wanders in, demands of world in general where all her saris are, she knows she owns them, lots of them, in fact, have I seen them, no I haven't, do I still have that bottle of silver glitter, please can she borrow it, goes off to find it without waiting for answer, cue my father, he didn't know there was ice-cream, where is said ice-cream ("In the freezer, possibly?"), I didn't offer him any ice-cream, do I have any concern at all for my fellow man, clearly not, I will grow up to be the sort of person who reads the Daily Mail. Honestly, I do adore my parents.)

Anyway! Things that are of note, numbered as usual:

1. We can has cat! The landlord said yes. Therefore, chiasmata, sebastienne and I are free to become crazy cat ladies as and when we would like. I am quite, quite ridiculously excited about this.

2. Also, we can has... well. I feel that it needs recording that yesterday, due to a sequence of highly improbable circumstances, shimgray became the vaguely surprised owner of a thirteen-foot kayak. (With no paddles. We are literally up a creek... yeah.) Consequently, I shall be spending part of my Saturday tying it up with blankets and perambulating it home.

...anyway.

3. I met Anne Fine today! I was a big fan of hers when I was small - I have clear memories of reading Flour Babies and Goggle Eyes as they first came out - and she's apparently written about fifty books for children since. Anyway, she was a delight. I did a couple of hours' work in the shop in the afternoon - well, I say work; there were no customers whatsoever - and then toddled along two doors down to set up for the signing, met Book-Monkey-in-Chief carrying two boxes of books, took them off him and went to see what chaos I could bring order to, whilst the poor actual author followed us all down with some bemusement.

But, eventually she sat down, the kids queued up, it was all great. First of all, she can't talk to children. Well, she can't talk to children the way teachers and parents talk to children - she kept on getting halfway through words she possibly ought not to say, and then stopping, and then finally giving up altogether and talking about the bloody publishers at will. And it was more than stopping not to swear - she said to one small child, who had been standing there in front of my box of books for about half an hour, "You are pathologically indecisive." The small child clearly didn't understand but enjoyed the word "pathologically".

And in the breaks between signings, she talked to me, and apparently Book-Monkey-in-Chief had been telling tales, because she asked me about how Oxford had changed in the last twenty years - since her son was a Balliol PPEist. I told her a bit about how I'd found it, especially philosophy, and she fixed me with a gimlet stare and said, "Never forget. You have had an incomparable education."

I said I wouldn't. "No," she went on, thoughtfully, "They teach you how to think, don't they?"

That's the idea, I said. My degree results come out this week, I said.

She laughed and said, "What would you like me to write, darling?" to the front of the queue, and wrote with love to the most indecisive child in the world.

The signing actually went rather well. A lot of young children who had just read The Diary of the Killer Cat, and slightly older ones who had just read Goggle Eyes, and a surprising amount who wanted to read one called The Road of Bones. Now, I remember Goggle Eyes very well; I re-read it as an adult not long ago and realised anew how very, very good it is. (It is the story of Kitty, who does not like her mother's new boyfriend; this very simple plot is interspersed with clever allusions, acerbic wit and, my favourite, a marvellous set-piece involving the late-eighties CND.) This other one was new to me, having been written much more recently, and it was being gripped tightly by a solemn-faced boy named Joseph. "Sweetheart," she said, "you're ten, you don't want to read about Stalinist Russia" - but she ended up signing it To Joseph, who stood his ground.

As we were packing up, I asked her to sign something for me. A poster for The Tulip Touch (which is a horrifying - and horrifyingly good - young adult book based in part on the murder of James Bulger, so quite evocative for me, reading it) that claims it's Whitbread book of the year - which means it's been at the back of one of triptogenetica's cupboards for twelve years. She was very startled to see it, but signed it happily to James.

In fact, she was very good company. It's weird, but I've been here two weeks and not really seen any of my friends and done nothing but go to work in the morning and come back in the evening, and I've missed good company, which for me is usually defined as people who light up the room with how bright they are. One of the local newspapers was interviewing her, asked how much input she had into the film version of Mrs. Doubtfire (the book was called Madame Doubtfire, if I remember rightly), and if she had any regrets - and she said, not seeing the Beatles in Northampton in 1961.

And that was that. We finished packing, I picked up my wages from the shop, and she disappeared, but not before wishing me good luck for my results and telling me, "Give my very best regards to James, and congratulate him on his fine taste and discretion."

Not bad, I think, for an afternoon's work.

Anyway, I need to go to bed and kill this headache somehow. Tomorrow, I depart from Up North and return to Oxford. At least, for a while. I will be around and about until Wednesday night, at which point I depart for San Francisco. But in the meantime. Argh, my head. Bedtime.