Stories for Another Day

I have noticed a little theme creeping in to my posts of late, related to my own inimitable style, which is, shall we call it – ahem – stream of consciousness or, perhaps, being unable to stick to any given subject for more than half a sentence. 
The theme to which I refer is the repeated allusion to tantalising tales from my lurid past followed by:
(a story for another day).

It has been pointed out to me that I have yet to deliver any of these stories and some people are even beginning to think that I am telling porky pies.

But I am not.

It is merely symptomatic of my disorganised brain that I interject these little snippets of memory, and if you were to meet me in person and be subjected to one of my lengthy monologues (poor you!) this is exactly the way I would Ancient Mariner you into a coma while you were just trying to get directions to the corner shop.

Funnily enough I have found that it is the very act of retelling the daily bulletins of my currently not very unusual existence as a mother of two small children, which suddenly recalls the rather outlandish ways in which I used to spend my time prior to this endeavour.

Am I wistful for the times when I would slip out of my large London house, in which I lived blissfully alone, with just a key and a few pounds in my pocket, a hazy idea that I was going to meet some friends somewhere or other and that I might come back either in a couple of hours or a couple of days depending on what happened next?

Perhaps.

I often think I would like to take a two-week holiday back into my former life (including my former body!) and then return to my loving family, kind husband, delightful, delicious, much longed for children.
I was terribly anxious back then that I might never end up as I am now: Married-with-children, living a respectable life with fresh vegetables in the fridge and a calendar full of comforting appointments like the children’s’ dentist checkups or trips to the theatre booked well in advance.

I had a rather tumultuous time of it from the tender age of 17 when I left home, travelling 3000 miles back to London from the USA where my father was based,  ostensibly to further my education, but actually to go to nightclubs and pore through the ads in the back of Melody Maker. From then on it was pretty much a rabbit-hole adventure through a succession of weird jobs, friendships with other slightly unstable persons of a creative bent, unsuitable lovers of all descriptions, trips to inadvisable destinations, an on-again-off-again relationship with the DSS (this last I regarded as a state scholarship) and music, music, music. 

Sometimes it was fantastic. Sometimes it was terrifying.

It was rarely dull.

I’m sure I’d have had more fun back then if I’d known that my current life was waiting at the end of it. Not worried so much about being left on the shelf, if my career would work out, of whether the lack of convention in my life was preparing me for an old age of penury and eccentric loneliness where I would mutter to myself all day, eat out of dustbins and keep several hundred cats. Of course this may still come, but at the moment it’s looking less likely.

I have been keeping a vague note in the back of my head to go back and fulfill all my promises of (stories for another day) and was delighted to hear via Twitter yesterday that there is an amazing software program out there called DevonThink that will help people like me organise their random thoughts by cross referencing words in documents via some immensely clever algorithm and then, Bob’s your Uncle!, I will have my entire life written out in chronological order, or an even more pleasing arrangement and I then can publish it and adjust my memory accordingly, spending my twilight years reminiscing about a past with the boring bits edited out (I don’t ever need to remember getting the plunger out after someone else has used the loo or similar).

So, with that in mind, I am going to continue interjecting these teasers as they come with the full confidence that I will be able to come through on the whole story in the fullness of time.

Here are some sneak previews of several more scurrilous (stories for another day) that came to mind just as I was writing this post alone. 

• The time I was forced to eat at McDonalds in Paris by a lover (who at that very moment became an ex-lover)
  
• The time I nicked Madonna’s boyfriend (true! But it was done unwittingly)
  
•  The weekend spent at Longleat with Lord Bath as a guest of one of his wifelets. That was CRAZY. And on the way back, Husband (then new boyfriend) had to direct us home via telephone from France where he was living. It was not terribly practical or cheap, but we would never have gotten back without him.
  
•  The time I was duped into performing as a ‘wandering minstrel’ on a boat on the Thames singing Beatles songs for 100 Japanese tourists. I do not know any Beatles songs. It was hell. I am amazed they paid us.

Please let me know if any of them are of particular interest, or, indeed, if you were part of that story and have a perspective to add. You know who you are, people. Speak up.

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