THE LITTLE MERMAID (COPENHAGEN) (2017)
I WILL PREVIVE [A Side Serve Of Stones] diary extract, 21 June 2017
THE INBETWEENERS series (2017)
“Yesterday I tried very hard to be normal, for the morning at least. The shower bop was back! Hip hop hooray! I peeled the remaining steri-strips off my tummy to the dawn disco. What lay beneath? To my surprise, all was good. A short smile lay under my tummy button and when I looked at my torso in the mirror I thought about all the scars in star constellations. The plough? Is that the same as the saucepan? The southern cross? Orion? I’d better brush up on my astronomy for a bigger picture. Full face on, proper clothes on, watch on. Good to go out out.
I had my bloods taken at “Gastrocare.” Gastro Lady didn’t care that much. In fact she didn’t give a stuff about me! I wished Gastrocare was a Gastropub or La Gastronomie or ANYTHING food related so I went straight to Macca’s for a second brekkie. Food dreams can come true! Sausage-egg McMuffin later I got my specs tightened from all the hospital overuse, then hit the sales for some retail therapy and general joy. I shop therefore I am, right? I existed just by being a flat, grey dag out in that daggy shopping mall. But it was weird. I was so, so tired. And still so bloody teary. Who goes shopping when their eyes are all glassy? When they are on the edge? Fleetwood Mac sang over the sound system, “Something’s happenin’, happenin’ to me. My friends say I’m acting peculiarly.” S’true. I was dizzy, ditzy, dopey… and I am really too embarrassed to chit chat about some of my foggy blunders in the shops. I should not have been out on the streets. Straight back home for tea, soup and bed. Game over.
While I was reading the whole internet on the weekend I came across a story about the historical vicious attacks on the Lil Mermaid in Copenhagen. I saw her in the flesh as a backpacker but until now I never knew what lay beneath her: twice decapitated, blown up, arm sawn off and covered in paint, to name but a few trials. The word they teach my lil mermie rugrats in education today is ‘resilience’. I think it is a good word to teach them and as long as I feel as broken as I do now, this arty girl can at least look to the resilience of the Lil Mermaid to believe that things can only get better. D:Reams can come true.”