He Lied In Every Word

I'm thinking of cultivating an ethereal and mystical aura. The only things that spring to mind from that sentence are a tie-dyed T-shirt, a long cotton skirt, sandals, frizzy hair and the reek of sandalwood, so the look probably isn't for me. Give me jeans, pithy slogan T-shirts and Amazing Impromptu Haircut any day. I also loathe sandalwood.

The reason for this is some of the ridiculous awkwardness from a neighbourhood mum because I gave her daughter an ice pack for a twisted ankle. ("I'll get it back to you," she sheepishly announced). I found these ice-cube bags in the amazing plastic bag aisle while grocery shopping (cringe*) and had one filled up. Since the ice-pack is disposable, I wasn't too fussed about getting it back. Really. If I wanted it back I would have said where and when. I'm direct like that.

While I'm on the subject, I'm not un-fond of my possessions, but they are only possessions. If I lend something to someone, I hope for it back, but I say goodbye before I hand it over. Not because I think it will get damaged, destroyed or run off with, just because accidents sometimes happen. If it's a disposable something, I couldn't care less if it became Prime Minister, won an Oscar and went on to say it was all down to its new owner in its thank-you speech. The awkwardness** then is perplexing, and occasionally irritating.

So the mystical and ethereal manner could work for me. I could look even more vague than usual. I only need to practice a beatific smile, and stop saying "WHAT?" when I've had a zone-out. I could wear a long cotton dress thing and an occasional stretchy velvet thing. And smell of sandalwood (if I had nose plugs). Although practising facial expressions in a mirror feels a bit American Psycho, and Patrick Bateman is a tool.

*Normally I avoid gadgety-plastic-bags like this because they're disposable, usually craptastic (or less fabulous than I've hoped) and seem a ridiculous waste of all the effort to make plastic. I'm funny that way. I also have a sidebar feeling of the great advertising cliche: being one half of two c's in a k. Erk. (Although I don't have another c that I talk to about shopping in my kitchen over coffee and teacakes we've baked ourselves. Perhaps I'm doing something wrong and should embrace the cliche.)

**I have an urge to invent the word "awkwardity". Until I see how stupid it looks when I type it.

It's three a.m. in the neighbourhood and I've hit a sleepy spot.

It's hard to function at this time of night,
When eyelids slide shut in spite of false light;
My head hits the bench as sleeping I fall
In flittering dark, a whispering hall.
Liquid muttering, shapes felt but unseen,
A glimmer of skin, unhealthy, unclean;
I should run away; no running, not yet.
There's nowhere to go, it's in my own head,
As if the horrors I know took root: bred.
Short naps such as this are double-edged gifts;
The rest of the sleep, the dreams in the rift.

So fell Lord Perth; see that crater in the Earth?