Cats

Part of the beauty of Japan lies in its ability to make simple what the western world makes complicated; to reach into the human mind, acknowledge what it sees there and then celebrate it. If human desire is a splinter in all of us, the western world is the kid that walks around on the balls of his feet, wincing and pretending it is not there; Japan is the kid that pulls it out, gives a loud and proud cheer and then shows it to all of his friends.

This is a culture where the things that every human secretly wants - that every human secretly needs - are acknowledged, celebrated and catered for instead of furtively hidden away. Pleasure is made an event, instead of something to be ashamed of. There are cubicles you can rent by the hour to watch videos and drink tea under a heated blanket when you're bored; there are capsule rooms you can rent to take a nap in at lunchtime when you're hungover. Love hotels - one of the country's biggest money spinners - are glossy, romantic hotels designed for couples to use; pay by the hour from an anonymous vending machine at the front, complete with little face washes and hair brushes to tidy up when you're finished. In England, thousands of teenagers use passport photobooths to take 'creative' photos with their friends; in Japan, they have designated creative photobooths for teenagers, complete with an inbuilt photoshop to cover up the spots. In England, people convert to Christianity for five minutes so that they can get married in a pretty church; in Japan, they skip the hypocrisy and simply build beautiful, non-secular registration offices that look like churches that anyone - regardless of faith or religion - can get married in. We all like to soak in a hot bath, so in Japan they scrap five foot tubs filled with grotty tap water, and create twenty foot oak lined public tubs filled with bubbling mineral water. There is no human desire that Japan does not acknowledge and then - without shame, without embarrassment - rejoice in, simplify and beautify.

Today, however, I experienced possibly the pinnacle of this culture; something that could not exist in England, simply because it the rationality of it is so devastatingly Japanese.

"We're going to a cat cafe," my friend said while we were wandering around Harijuku after lunch. "I need a coffee."

"Okydoky," I replied, because - frankly - I'm not that bothered by what I do, as long as it's something I've not done before. And I needed a coffee.

We climbed to the top of a high office block, and then queued for 20 minutes outside a room that looked - unsurprisingly - very much like an office.

"So," I said eventually, after 15 minutes of waiting in line (there are lines for everything in Japan: if there isn't, it's probably not worth bothering with). "Cat cafe, hey. Is it cat themed or something?"

"Not exactly," my friend said as we were ushered into the room and had 1,000 yen taken from each of us.

She was right: it wasn't cat themed at all. It was simply a room, with chairs, filled with cats. Real, live cats; sleeping, playing lethargically with toy mice, lolling around and occasionally trying to hump each other. We had paid 1,000 yen to drink a cup of tea and sit, for an hour, stroking cats.

"We just pat them?" I said to my friend in confusion.

"Yep."

"And then what happens?"

"Nothing. We just pat them and then we go home."

"So it's really a...." I thought about it. "It's a kind of intensive cat-fix centre."

"Yep," my friend said, prodding affectionately at a particularly sleepy white one in a very large and fluffy pink tower.

"You'd never pay eight quid in England to stroke a flamin' cat," I muttered, and sat in a chair to drink my tea. "You'd just go and find one on a street corner somewhere."

After fifteen minutes of confused and cynical patting, however, it all suddenly started making sense. The music was low and soothing; the room was warm and filled with the smell of coffee; the cats were... well, not affectionate, exactly, but lethargic and generally bored enough to be pretty amenable to anything. And - as I stroked, and told them they were cute, and played with the feather attached to a stick they gave me - I realised I had missed it; that I had missed interacting with an animal, and the calm and homey-feeling that cats automatically encourage, just by being there. That I had missed being able to relax with a cat on my lap, even if it wasn't my cat; missed playing with one, and laughing when it chewed on my jumper, even if I had no idea what its name was. And that Japan had somehow known I needed that feeling, and had designed a room specifically for it.

Japan, to some, seems crazy, eccentric, hedonistic, but to me it makes sense. Perhaps it has one of the world's lowest crime rates simply because it represses nothing, and encourages everything; there is no concept of sin as long as nobody is hurt in the process, so there is nothing left to rebel against, and no boredom to alleviate. And - in contrast to a western world filled with psychoanalysts who are trained to make us understand ourselves in the most forced, complicated way possible - it's a culture that does that in a simple, beautiful, hedonistically childlike way.

It's true that in England, if you want to stroke a cat and don't actually have a cat, you find one on a street corner, give it a furtive pat on the head as you walk past and hope its owner doesn't notice. And - okay - it doesn't cost eight quid a pop, but it doesn't feel as good either. It doesn't satisfy the bit inside you that really just needs to cuddle a cat for a minute.

And a culture that knows that, even if it charges you for it? That, to me, is a culture worth celebrating.

White Christmas

There is nothing as wonderful in the world as the imagination. No matter where you are in the world, and no matter what you're doing, you are never far away from where you want to be.

Today - for me - is Christmas Eve. It doesn't matter that it's sunny outside; it doesn't matter that everywhere is open; it doesn't matter that it means nothing in Japan; it doesn't matter that I am on my own. Today is Christmas Eve, and so I have made my own Christmas. Nat King Cole and Judy Garland are singing as loudly as I dare play them in a flat made of paper, I have peeled a couple of oranges and left them around my flat, and I've lit a couple of hazardous candles. A pile of parcels and cards from England are sitting in a pile on my table, and I'm humming to carols while I make my Christmas Eve dinner (chocolate followed by another helping of chocolate, which is pretty much what I'd eat at home as well). It's A Wonderful Life is up and ready to play, and Skype is set so that my mum can read me The Night Before Christmas on the webcam before I go to sleep. I've concentrated so hard now that - as far as I'm concerned - it's actually snowing outside; I only have to close my eyes to know exactly how my family's Christmas tree will look, and exactly how the house will smell, and exactly what they'll be doing round about now (my dad will be stealing chocolates off the tree and my mum will be shouting at him and telling them to put them back).

This is my first Christmas away from the people I love, and I thought it would be harder: but it's not. I forgot how powerful the heart is, and how persuasive the imagination. In my mind, I'm there: I'm with my mum, tucked up in front of the telly drinking Baileys; I'm with my sister, smoking in the garden where my parents can't see us; I'm with my dad, scolding him for being late back from the pub for lunch. I'm helping my grandma with the brussel sprouts, and my grandad with the turkey. I'm covered in snow, and shaking myself off on the doorstep so I don't make a mess of the carpet. I'm there, and the small matter of a few thousand miles doesn't make a difference to me. Christmas is for the people you love, and my heart is with them, even if I'm not.

I'm not just dreaming of a White Christmas this year; I'm dreaming of a Christmas, full stop. But it's enough. The imagination is like the snow covering England at the moment, and you can do what you like with it; make what you will with it. And - this year - I'm playing in it with my family, and leaving footprints all over it.

Because, on my favourite day of the year, there's nowhere else I want to be.

Merry Christmas.

Gardens

When you're sitting comfortably, the foundations beneath you can often go unnoticed. Perched where it feels nice, the rot eats away until you wake up one morning and realise that you've fallen through to the bottom.

This might be true of life and love - yes - but, unfortunately, it's also true of my futon: a futon that is quite literally, physically and not in the slightest bit metaphorically covered in mould.

I had no idea. Not even the faintest inkling. I've been happily sleeping inches away from a green, wet, festering layer of something that smells not very nice: all the while congratulating myself on the nice, tidy state of my flat and the fact that I now do my washing up at least every other day. Worse - and this is truly disgusting - it's a mould that must have grown from the steam from my showers, the sweat from my nightmares, the damp from my breath and the vapour from my hideous attempts at cooking: in short, it's my mould. Mould grown from me. And I've been rolling around on top of it, wondering why all was not right with the world. Indeed, I wouldn't have found it at all if I hadn't decided to do a Christmas Clean and sweep 'under my bed'; something I've never done before, and wouldn't have thought about if I hadn't spilled a cup of coffee under there a couple of days ago. (I once witnessed my father vacuuming around a sock: I was not brought up to clean properly.)

Everything suddenly makes sense. I've been falling asleep and writing and waking up on a rotten bed; I've been visiting Onsens and scrubbing myself red raw and squeaky clean, and then putting on my pyjamas and lying on top of mould. I've made dreams on a foundation of something green and slimy: how could I expect any of them to come true?

Of course, it turns out - now that I've done a little research - that a Japanese futon is not a western mattress: it needs tatami mats (which I don't have), and to be aired daily (which I don't do), and to be put away in cupboards during the day (which I don't have, or do). A couple of months of just changing the bedding, apparently, leaves you with some kind of botanical garden in your bedroom; one that means you have to spend the night on the wooden floor with a blanket, because you've now got nothing else to sleep on.

At least it's forced me to do what I may never otherwise have done: to scrub every inch of my flat, instead of just waving a broom at the centre parts of it. It's ensured that I will never again cat lick my flat, and consider it clean. And - even more importantly - it's made sure that this time, it really is a fresh start when I wake up tomorrow morning. And that the next time I dream, it's going to be on something that doesn't have rot in the middle of it.

Swimming

Being the person I want to be, sometimes, can be so hard. Sometimes, it can feel impossible. The bad parts in me - the incredible selfishness, the temper, the drama, the impatience, the impetuousness - rise up with such power, with such force, that they feel like a tidal wave I can't fight against: one that will crush me and carry me into a dark, hard place that will be nothing like the place I was swimming towards. And sometimes I am so tired that it seems like the easiest thing in the world just to stop. To let go, and let myself be swept - limp and exhausted - back to the place where I can destroy, and rant, and demand and control and be a subject of my own whims and emotions and passions. Even if it means that I can no longer hold my head up, because it is ground into the sand.

It's too easy. Too easy to be bad. Too easy to be selfish. Too easy to be crazy. Too easy to do what I want to do, sometimes, even if it's not good for me. And when I'm hurting, it becomes even easier. To forget about dignity, and pride, and honesty, and integrity. To forget about the things that I value more than I value getting what I want, which is - when I'm tired, when I'm exhausted - all I can ever really think about. No matter how hard I try not to.

In short, I'm still heartbroken. I'm not over The Boy; not even slightly. I'm functioning again - I'm eating, I'm sleeping, I'm laughing, I'm playing with the children, I'm enjoying my friends, I'm seeing again (the sky, the buildings around me, the people on the train next to me: all obliterated in the immediate pain of the breakup) - but I'm not whole. I think about him all of the time. I miss him all of the time. I want him back, all of the time. And every time I try to push my love for him away - to put it in a little box with a Christmas ribbon, and tuck it away somewhere where I can't find it when I'm drunk or emotional - I can't do it. It's too tangible, as if I can prod it with my fingers, and it makes me feel simultaneously heavy and slightly sick - as if I've eaten too much of something bad for me - and empty, as if I've vomited everything that was good.

Every day, still, is a struggle against him. A struggle to let him go. To be a good person. To fight my instincts - the instincts that want to ring him, and text him, and email him, and tell him when something good happens, and when something bad happens, and when something irrelevant happens, just because I want him to know that it's happening, and to know that I'm still alive and hurting - and behave with dignity, and pride, and self respect. Because every day feels like I'm wading through a thick, sticky river of minutes without him, and every crowd is crammed full of faces that are not him. And the absence of him - the space that he has left behind - feels so heavy that it's hard to stand up; and contacting him feels like the only possible way I can make it lighter, even if for a tiny, tiny while.

But I have no choice. I either give in - and get swept into the wave of selfishness and vague stalkerdom - or I fight it, and try to push through: hope that soon the minutes will get less sticky, and the crowds will have their own faces and not just an absence of his. That the weight will be lighter, in time. Because I have to have the grace and dignity that are more important to me than love; that are more important to me, even, than happiness. And anger and emotion and futile text messages are not going to give me them. Only walking away can do that.

I'm not sure I'll ever quite be the person I want to be; that I'll ever have the peace, and grace, and bravery, and dignity, of the future self I am constantly swimming towards. But this is not the heartbreak that will take me back to the shore, and leave me broken on the sand. It is the heartbreak that I will hold onto like a raft: that will, perhaps, eventually - one day, when I least expect it - carry me with it, and take me that little bit closer.

EJ

The problem with believing in something is that sometimes it can be really, really inconvenient. Beliefs can screw you over, just as fast as they can save you.

I've always had this deep conviction - small and insignificant as it might seem - that the minute you start to create something for somebody, it is theirs. Whatever it is - whether it's a poem, or a story, or a piece of art, or a song, or a doodle on a page while you're on the telephone - the minute that first line is down, or the first note is sung, or the first word is written, this thing is no longer yours: it belongs to the person for whom it was intended. They are, in fact, in a way the creator: they have inspired it, and you are simply the means by which it has appeared. So - in the nature of all that is good and honest and innocent and beautiful in art - it should remain so. In some cosmic, unseen force, this thing that only exists because of another person in the first place has tied you to them inextricably (even if temporarily, like Donne's fly) and can never be changed, unless destroyed. To go against this and do something else with it is simply bad luck: it is inciting the power of art and of music and of innocence and of beauty, and it is turning it against yourself.

I call it the Elton John Effect, thanks to his lazy reappropriation of Candle In The Wind, written for his childhood idol Marilyn, and handed over to Diana because - presumably - he was too worn out from The Lion King to bother writing a new one. Every note in the second version sounded embarrassed; ashamed of itself, in knowing that it was meant for somebody else. Like the second proposal to a different woman with the same ring and restaurant.

Anyway, a while ago I started a drawing for The Boy; a drawing that was going to be exchanged over Christmas on our holiday together. Now, the holiday's cancelled, The Boy is gone, but the drawing is finished. I carried on - possibly putting more effort in than usual, thanks to the concentration that combined heartbreak and long lunchbreaks bring - and it's done; possibly one of my best (which is not saying much that isn't strictly comparative: I'm not an artist and never have been).

And now, of course, I have to give it to him. I have no other option. It is his drawing, whether I like it or not, and so it has to be his: to give it to anyone else, or to keep it, would be to evoke a lot of bad luck and Elton John inspired shame upon myself, which frankly I don't think I could handle. So I have to hand over something precious to me to somebody who probably doesn't want it; who will say thankyou and pop it in a drawer as a reminder not to date anyone who draws things. I have to hand over another piece of me, and know that I may never see it again.

The thing with beliefs is that - uncomfortable as they sometimes are - they cannot be avoided; they can only be followed, quietly. And all I have to do before I pop this drawing in the postbox is remember that it was never mine to start with.

And possibly play a little Elton John.

Apology to Grandma

I got shouted at by my dad last night. We'd barely connected on Skype before he was having a go at me. Or, I should say: before his stomach was having a go at me, because he still hasn't mastered the art of standing where I can see his face on the webcam.

"You swore on your blog," his stomach said to me crossly, and my mum looked anxious next to it.

"I did not!" I remonstrated.

"You did, and it upset your grandma," dad's stomach barked at me. Then he bent down so that I could see the bottom of his angry chin.

"Where?" I demanded. "When?"

"Well I don't bloody know," dad shouted: "I don't read it, do I. I've got much better things to do. But you swore, and it upset your grandma, and I don't like you upsetting your grandma. So you must email her and apologise and stop bloody swearing."

"Yeah," my mum said, raising an eyebrow at me. "I wonder where she gets that from, Mark."

"I've got the vocabulary of an angel, I'll have you know," dad stormed, and then his stomach paraded into the back of the living room so that the cat could sit on it.

I went straight back onto my blog to check for sailor-talk, and sure enough: there it was. I can imagine exactly how the moment went. Grandma will have been reading my blog outloud, possibly to my grandad - with her reading glasses put on especially - and then she will have inadvertently said the dastardly word, and there will have been a shocked pause.

"Well," grandma will have said, looking a lot like the Queen but a little bit more dignified. "I don't think that was necessary."

"She's young," grandad might have said, or possibly: "she's in a very emotional place right now. She probably didn't even notice." Then he may have added: "and it was in quotation marks, which means that somebody else said it. She's just reporting on a conversation." Or, even, "she's very busy at the moment. Maybe she didn't have time to edit properly."

Grandma will have looked even more dignified, and possibly have adjusted her glasses a little bit.

"If she's very busy I would have thought it would take less time to not add that extra word," she probably said. "And there are lots of other words to use when you're emotional. There's no need for that kind of language. No need at all."

And then she would have carried on reading the blog, because she's my grandma and she loves me and she'd already forgiven me.

Language is a funny thing. Sometimes it's less something you use to communicate, and more something that uses you. And when I'm emotional, and tired, and angry, and stressed, I forget that my writing can affect people other than myself. And make them emotional and tired and angry and stressed too.

I'm so sorry grandma. I promise to be better in future. And if I'm not, just blame my dad. I got my vocabulary from an angel too. :) x

Great expectations

"The thing about life," my friend emailed me yesterday, "is that it's important to have no expectations. If you do, it will always disappoint you. If you don't, then it can't."

Ever since I was little, Christmas has been the emotional pivot of the year for me: the high point from which the rest of the year hangs, like a nail in the wall. Perhaps because I'm a Christmas baby and it was the first thing my brain ever registered, it has an importance for me that none of my friends seem to experience. When I was tiny, by the beginning of November I'd start feeling queasy with excitement; by the end of the month - when the trees were up and the music was playing - I'd be unable to sleep at night. By the time my birthday was over - barely even registered, as overshadowed as it was in my head - I would be a small, twirly ball of frantic nerves and hopes and expectations and dreams. Visions of sugar plums didn't just dance in my head: they paraded, they stomped and they generally made noisy nuisances of themselves and kept me up at night, bouncing on my bed.

Every year, I would wish that it could be Christmas forever. The lights, the trees, the music, the smells, the open fire, the chocolates. The scent of orange and cookie and cinammon; the warm, fluffy films on telly; everybody looking happy even when it was dark; my parents moving my presents every day because I wouldn't stop looking until I had found them. Okay, I wouldn't let Father Christmas in my room at night to fill my stocking - having strange old men in my bedroom scared me - but I would still creep down to the fireplace every hour or so to check if he'd been, and if the reindeer had eaten the carrots. Christmas was magic; it was the only time of year when anything could happen, and where good reigned, and where beauty triumphed, and where I was allowed to wear my best dress to school without being told I'd end up ruining it.

And then it would be over. After two months of tail wagging and sticky palms, Christmas would be over: an open stocking, a lot of wrapping paper and a Queen's speech, and everyone would be asleep in front of the tv, stuffed to the brim with roast potatoes and snoring. The magic and the beauty of it always seemed to pop, as if somebody had taken a pin to Christmas and it had exploded. And every year - when I waited for my dad to start farting in his sleep in front of the telly - I resented it a little bit more. It depressed me a little bit more: that the magic could disappear like that. That it could be all over, like that. Until I stopped looking forward to Christmas, because it was only going to disappoint me.

I'm 28 now: this will be my 28th Christmas, although I was only two weeks old the first time I had one. And I know, now - finally - that it was never about Christmas. That the day itself doesn't matter.

Christmas is not about the 25th of December. It's not about the brussel sprouts and the roast potatoes and the crackers and the snoring. It's not about the farting and the inevitable quarrels and your sister's rabbit eating the bottom half of the tree lights. It's not about one day at all. Christmas is the hope of brussel sprouts and roast potatoes; it's the magic of dreams, and looking forward to something, and believing in something that isn't real and doesn't have to be. It's about the happiness that can only be got from expectation, and plans, and the total and whole hearted embracing - without fear, without restriction - of something that will always, always, always end, and was always going to.

Just because something ends, just because it disappoints, just because it doesn't turn out the way you hoped it would, doesn't mean that dreaming of it, and hoping for it, and expecting it, is a waste of time. Dreams can stand up on their own, without the realisation of them. They don't need to be made real to be worth having. And the Christmas I loved, I realised eventually, was the hope of Christmas. And that hope of Christmas - that build up to it - may have been inside me, but it was just as important and just as tangible as anything on the outside. It was just as special. And it was just as worth holding on to.

This year - on my 28th Christmas - I'm having to deal with a lot of disappointments, a lot of crushed dreams, and a lot of tailored expectations. The end of a lot of the things that seemed so magic to me for so long, and popped overnight.

But I will not regret them. I will continue to hope, and dream, and be disappointed, and watch things end. Because it doesn't matter. If Christmas - the Christmas that matters - is in the hope of it, then so, too, is life. And I shall continue to have great expectations of it.