Dancefloor

Some emotions are so old, and so well buried, that when you feel them again it's as if they're new.

When I was a child, every year my school would hold a disco. And, every year, I would don my best velvet waistcoat, take my hair out of its permanent pony-tail, and attempt to occupy some kind of space on the dance floor. I would half-heartedly jump up and down, I would twitch from side to side, and - most importantly - I would try to pretend I recognised music that was quite clearly not Tchaikovsky's Dying Swan. And every year I would nervously await the final three and a half minutes of the night: the three and a half minutes that made me try and fake a sickness every single year, on exactly the same date.

It was always horrible, and I can still remember exactly how I felt. I can remember the cold chill I got when the lights went down, and the churn of my stomach when the pace of the music slowed to a rate that forces you to cling in pairs. I can still feel the sense of shame as I immediately retreated to a dark seat in an even darker corner, and the pain and sense of exclusion I felt as I watched every one else choose somebody to dance with that wasn't me. I remember the humiliation - trying to become invisible - and the hurt that I wasn't visible enough. The desperate wish to be somewhere else, and the more desperate wish to be someone else. The hope, tiny and improbable as it was, that perhaps that year somebody would pick me.

And I remember - inevitably - the moment when the teachers would look at the remaining boy (whoever it was that year), and at me, and would then make a little gesture that said: well, go on then you two. You're a girl. He's a boy. Dance. As if we were being problem children by sitting it out, and destroying the happiness of the couples by watching forlornly from the edges: our sadness making everyone uncomfortable. As if we had given up all rights to picking our partners by not being popular enough. And as if anybody would do. Because we just needed somebody to cling to, didn't we?

Of all my memories of childhood, that one hurts the most. And - when I left school - that was the one I left behind with the most gratitude. Never again, I thought. Never again will I have to sit on the edge of the dancefloor on my own and watch the room fill with couples. And I didn't. I stayed away from them during University formals, and I always left the club before the music slowed. I made sure, as an adult, that I never ever had to feel again what I felt as a nine year old girl.

Twenty years later, and the room is filling all over again. And I feel nine, all over again.

Everyone I know has now chosen their partner, and been chosen. They've fallen in love for the last time, and now they're starting the long, long slow dance that will (they hope) last the rest of their lives. And I am still sitting on the edge in the dark, on my own: being pushed towards the leftovers, regardless of who they are, because they're somebody to hold onto. Watching the couples, and watching their happiness, and recognising those feelings of loss and loneliness all over again. Wanting it for myself, and knowing I don't have it. Wondering why. And knowing as I knew back then: that when everyone has chosen, you have to sit the rest out. Because it's too late.

"Do you think," I said to my dad last week, "that most of the truly amazing men in the world are taken by 30?"
I had hoped he would roll his eyes and tell me not to talk nonsense; had hoped I was talking nonsense.
"Mmm," he said. "Probably. Well, the nice ones get snapped up, don't they, and then they stay there because they're nice. I was snapped up at 23."
"Are any left?"
"Possibly. But there's usually something wrong with them. Commitment fear and trust issues and infidelity issues etc. Same goes for women though."
"Do you think I've missed the boat, dad?"
"Maybe. But you can always wait until round Two and go for the divorcees."

And I laughed, but it made me sad. Not because I want to settle down now - the thought terrifies me - and not because I want a house and children immediately, or even very soon. But because I've never really had love - never been in love and been loved back at the same time - and so it seems tragic that I'll never have it when I'm young, and if I get it when I'm older it will never be a fresh love: will always be on the back of something failed and tired and sad. That I'll never get the innocence and hope and whole-heartedness that everyone deserves once in their lives. And it seems tragic that I'm still in love with a man who doesn't love me back - still unable to shake him from my heart - and that while I waited for him everyone started dancing.

When I was nine, I knew there were no real options if I wanted to maintain my dignity and self respect. I couldn't charge on to the dancefloor, picking apart couples or waiting for them to fall apart of their own accord, or stand on the floor shouting in protest, or cry in the corner.  And I couldn't pick up whoever was left, just because they were left. Twenty years later, I still have no options. I won't meet somebody here - we don't speak the same language - and I can't move home to London purely so that I can pick up whatever is left before it's too late. I can't start ploughing through bars and clubs trying to find anyone still on their own; even if I was ready to date again - which I'm still not quite - I couldn't do that. It's too far from who I am. And - more importantly - I have a life to get on with. Plans. Hopes. Dreams. Ambitions. I'm not giving them all up just so that I have somebody to dance with before they're all gone.

There was one secret dream I had, when I was nine, that I never told anyone: the dream that would stop me dissolving into a lump in the corner. When I was sitting on my little chair in the dark, I used to imagine that somebody new would walk in. A boy that nobody had seen before: who was so beautiful, and so intelligent, and so charismatic, that he had been somewhere else when everyone else was choosing. So amazing, that he had seen more than just the dancefloor. And he would walk in, and every single girl in the room would wish they hadn't picked so soon: would regret how quickly they had made their decision. But he would look at them, and look at me, and see all of it. All of me. And he would ask me to dance.

The emotions I pushed down so long ago have risen back up again and startled me. But - as when I was nine - there's absolutely nothing I can do but wait, and use my time as wisely as I can. Accept that perhaps I'm not meant for dancing. And hope that if somebody amazing turns up, I'm the one he wants to dance with.

Even if we're a little late.

Outcome

It missed. At the last minute, it changed direction and headed off towards Tokyo.

But everything is still cancelled. And I still have flu.

Typhoon 1 -- Holly 0.

God wins.

Victory

I`ve totally triumphed over the typhoon. In case anyone was wondering if it`s possible to win against God and any of his Acts: it is. And I have just proved it.

It`s still coming. It is definitely still coming. The wind has picked up, it`s freezing, the corridors at school are making whistling noises, and animals are going bonkers: tweeting and gathering and hiding and getting over-excited and/or anxious about their potential doom (do typhoons kill birds? The Miyazakian birds seem to think so). I haven`t started stockpiling marshmallows yet, but I`ll do that as soon as I get home. I certainly don`t want to be put in a situation where I have no marshmallows left when the wind hits.

However, I`m also a little otherwise occupied because of the following, oft-repeated conversation:

"How are you?"
"I`m fine," reply 36 little voices at once.
"Fine is not an answer I`m interested in. Who`s hungry?"
Fifteen hands go up.
"Who`s happy?"
Two hands go up.
"Who`s sleepy?"
28 hands go up.
"Who`s great?"
One optimistic hand goes up.
"And who`s sick?"
36 hands go up.

And then, in case they haven`t communicated properly, the teeny tiny ones climb on to my lap, wait for me to say something, and then cough in my open mouth. Or wipe their noses on my shoulder or hand. Or - inexplicably - take something off their lip and try and stick it on mine. Or lick my nose. Or lick their own hand and then wipe my face and then lick their hand again. Or kiss me straight on the mouth. Or roll a piece of rice between their fingers and then try and make me eat it. (At least, I hope it`s rice.)

I am therefore - along with most of the Elementary school teaching staff, and all of Kindergarten - sick. Nose running, throat burning, unable to speak properly. Which, I`m beginning to realise, is an occupational hazard, because nobody in the entire world can confront 500 slightly different flu germs a week and remain able to breathe at night and not wake up dreaming that you`re buried in sand. I can pour multi-vitamins down my throat with all the enthusiasm I can muster, but there isn`t a single letter of the alphabet that can protect me from that.

So I win, and the typhoon loses. It can blow as hard as it likes - it can cancel every single plan I`ve made for the next three days, and it can stop me having dinner with my friends - because I can`t go anyway. I`ll be scowling at inanimate objects in my bedroom regardless of what the weather does: I`ll be wrapped up in a blanket eating KitKats no matter how violent God wants to get or not get. It`s up to him. It doesn`t make the slightest bit of difference to me anymore. It can`t touch me.

Thus my flu has given two fingers up to the typhoon, and I am victorious. Snotty, growly, scowly and victorious.

And no matter how sick I get, isn`t that all that really matters?

Typhoon

Sod`s Law is back in full force.

I haven`t stopped asking about typhoons. During Typhoon Season, I drove my friends and colleagues mad with my "is it a typhoon yet?" enquiries. I would text them, I would email them: I would follow them around the staff room when they were trying to make coffee like an annoying toddler.

"Is it a typhoon yet?"
"No. It`s just windy."
"Is it a typhoon now?"
"No."
"What about now?"
"Still windy."
"What about last night?"
"Just wind."
"Tonight?"
"Wind."
"But it`s really windy."
"Yes. It is really windy. But it`s just really windy. It`s not a typhoon."

And, by the end of Typhoon Season, when I had still failed to witness a typhoon, I was having proper little tantrums.

"Is it a typhoon?"
"No."
"But wwwwwhhhhhhhhhhhhhhyyyyy nooootttttttt?"

Because we don`t get typhoons in England - we don`t get anything exciting in England - and so earthquakes, typhoons and perhaps tidal waves and hurricanes are unbearably exotic to me, and confirm that I am abroad. Indeed, any violent, extreme Act of God from a God who rarely even notices that England exists -and, when he does, just covers it in a bit of snow - is therefore exciting, and in some strange way acts as a little gold sticker that proves I was here.

However, Typhoon Season came and went with no typhoons, and eventually - with much sulking - I stopped enthusiastically tugging at the back of shirts whenever there was a bit of rain, and muttering "Typhoon? Typhoon?" in my sleep every time the wind blew.

October has been a quiet month, and I`ve been stony broke: eeking out pasta sauce with stolen packets of ketchup, and nicking toilet rolls from MacDonalds and popping leftover bread rolls from the school canteen into my pockets. But this weekend was going to bring relief from that, in the form of an all expenses-paid trip on Friday as part of an International Festival (I am international, and so all I`m expected to do is turn up and be foreign and they`ll pay for everything: a little like an gaijin escort), a huge fancy dress Halloween party on Saturday, and shopping for winter clothes with my new pay cheque on Sunday. Everything had been planned down to the letter: costume, travel, exactly how long I could go without shopping for food because I`d be eating bar snacks, exactly how much longer I could go without doing my laundry or owning a decent jumper.

And what would you know: now the typhoon is coming.

Everything is cancelled. International Festival: cancelled. Halloween party: cancelled. Shopping: cancelled. Offer to buy me drinks and food: cancelled. All interest in me being foreign: cancelled. Imaginative and yet cute Halloween costume: cancelled. And, instead, I get to sit inside all weekend, hoping that my roof doesn`t blow off, unable to invite anybody round because they`re not allowed to go outside in case they get hit by debris and sticks and glass and whatever else gets flung around in a typhoon (I don`t know, obviously, because this is my first). I get to have no electricity, probably, and no hot food, and nobody to talk to, and I get to sit in stinky clothes and freeze to death. Which is extremely far from the weekend I had planned, and somewhat diminishes just how exciting Acts of God can be. Because this God is obviously not as exotic as I had hoped, and obviously just a killjoy and pain in the arse.

Of course, now that I have no interest in the typhoon, or in any kind of weather update, everybody I have ever met is contacting me to tell me it`s coming.

"Typhoon at the weekend."
"I know."
"There`s a big typhoon on Saturday."
"I know."
"Typhoon tomorrow."
"I know."
And then the killer:
"Maybe typhoon this weekend. Maybe not. But everything is cancelled anyway."

To which I can come to only the following conclusion: Acts of God abide by Sod`s Law just like anything else. And if this weekend is ruined, I asked for it.

Many many times.

Meatloaf

My parents just found out about my scooter.

I wondered how long it would take them. Mum's been at school all week, and dad wouldn't find out until she read my blog and told him about it. And read it and tell him she clearly did.

"What the fuck do you think you are playing at?" my dad yelled down the webcam. Or: his shirt button yelled down the webcam. Mum's face was taking up the whole screen.
Mum pressed her lips together. "What is the one thing I have always asked you to never do, Holly? One thing?"
"Don't run holding scissors?"
"No. Don't ride a motorbike."
"It's not a motorbike. It's a scooter."
"It's a motorbike. It's a slow motorbike."
"It's a fast bicycle, mum."
Dad started pulling at the wheelie chair.
"Let me speak to her. I want to speak to her."
Mum leant towards the camera.
"Your dad wants to speak to you now," she informed me, in case I was both blind and deaf.
Dad sat down so that all I could see was his neck and chin, and mum perched on the chair next to him.
"Don't sit on my frigging glasses!" he shouted immediately. "Jesus Christ."
"I didn't! They are not sat on! I sat next to them!"
"Why are they bent in the shape of your butt then?" Dad put them on and glared at me. "One day and you fucking crashed the thing?"
"Only into a fence."
"Who do you think you are: Meatloaf? Sell it immediately. You are not born to ride motorbikes. You're like your mother."
"Oy," mum said. Then she poked the top of her head into the screen. "This is my contemptuous look, Holly. I am giving your father a contemptuous look."
"That's not contempt," dad replied, scrunching his face up and shaking his fist at the camera. "This is contempt."
"That looks like anger."
"No - this is anger." He did the same face.
"That's nothing like anger."
"And this is happy." Dad did the same face. "See how versatile I am?"
Mum pushed him out the way and stuck her face back in the webcam.
"I'm still contemptuous, as you can see. Holly, sell the motorbike."
"Did you get hurt?" dad barked, pushing mum out of the way again. "Did you break it?"
"No, but the basket fell off."
At which point dad shouted with laughter.
"The basket? What kind of motorbike is this? Too right you're not Meatloaf. Meatloaf doesn't have a basket on his motorbike."
"I told you it's a scooter."
"Give it up, Holly. You remember when you decided to ride my bike, eighteen months ago? And you put that poofy girl's seat on it and then crashed it and wouldn't get on again? I still have to ride that because I can't work out how to get it off again. A man's bike with a girl's fat bottom seat. I get laughed at by the boys."
"He does," mum added.
"Although it is pretty comfortable."
"It is," mum agreed.
"But still: a fat bottomed girl's seat. I'm not a fat bottomed girl. Sell the motorbike, Holly."
"No. And it's a scooter."
"Don't make me come over there," mum said, leaning into the webcam again. "See this? This is my threatening face, Holly. Look at it and take note. I don't like motorbikes."
"And you're not meatloaf."
"I know, but it's a scooter."

Parents put a lot of hard work and effort into turning their little spoilt brats into decent, workable human beings: they don't really want to see all of that effort get wrapped around a tree, or ploughed into a rice field. I can see that. But I'm going to be super careful, from now on. So careful, that nobody will have reason to worry about me and my transport.

Which is, for the record, a scooter.

Fried Fish

If you`re interacting with children on a daily basis, the assumption is that every day you`ll become more like a child.

You don`t.

If anything, the inner child recedes: when confronted with the real thing, it simply can`t compete. Whether it`s the simple joy of jumping up and down for absolutely no reason at all, or the stomach clenching fun of looking at someone until they give up and look away again, or the never-ending fascination in Rock Scissors Paper when there`s nothing to win but honour and pride in the shape of your own hand, as an adult you just can`t convince yourself that you enjoy it now as much as you used to. It`s just not easy to air punch and scream with jubilation because your hand is flat and theirs is in a fist: not so simple to really feel the triumph. It`s more of a and there you go, don`t mess with me because I`ve been playing Rock Scissors Paper since your parents were embryos kind of satisfaction (accompanied with a raised and wise eyebrow, because none of them have worked out that Japanese girls always choose paper and Japanese boys always choose rock and so I always win).

Worse: understanding fades away completely. I didn`t understand children when I was a child, and now that I`m a fully grown adult I understand them even less. I`m 28, and I`ve done a lot of things in my life that could be regarded as cool: been to celebrity parties, worked in trendy London media (with sparkley loo seats), been on telly, been told by the (gay) TopShop Creative Director that I`m "totally cute", featured on the front of a fashion magazine, visited 18 countries, paraglided and whitewater rafted and rock climbed and hot-airballooned, and partied until 7am in some of the best cities in the world. But as far as the children I teach are concerned, there is nothing less trendy, less hip and less cool than Holly Smale. The teacher who doesn`t know any songs by Arashi, and who picks up pencil cases covered in celebrity photos and says "Ooh, and who is this lovely chap?" The teacher who has nothing fluffy or sparkley or funky in her hair at all, who wears pink Crocs all the time, has a jaunty, terrible Japanese accent, drives into fences and hands out Winnie The Pooh stickers to 11 year olds.

Which means that as young as I am in adult terms, I`ve become used to seeing myself through the eyes of children: of feeling decrepit and totally, totally past it. I`ve gotten used to entertaining them with my failure to be cool: to dancing like an embarrassing old Aunt at a disco, or singing the vocabulary they`re meant to be learning instead of saying it, or meowing like a cat, or taking my shoes off and wandering around the classroom in bare feet. I`ve gotten used to not really knowing what it is to be a child.

And I have finally, finally triumphed.

For the last week, a small, cheeky little boy has been calling me Muxing. She`s another foreign teacher in the area, she`s of Chinese descent, and I have absolutely no idea why he is calling me by her name because we are not similar in either looks or mannerisms. He shouts it down the corridors, he says it in the middle of class whenever there`s a moment of silence, he waits until I walk past and then yells it at me in repeat. He waits until he has the biggest group of students possible, and then he screams it at the top of his voice. And I have reacted just like an adult.

"Muxing!"
"I`m not Muxing."
"Muxing!"
"I`m not Muxing."
"Muxing!"
"I don`t understand; why are you calling me Muxing?"
"Muxing!"
"Stop calling me Muxing."
"Muxing!"
"Stop it."
"Muxing!"
"Stop it."
"Muxing!"
"Why?"
"Muxing!"
"Why?! WHY WHY WHY WHYWHYWHYWHYWHY?"
"Muxing!"

Finally, something clicked. The realisation that the only way I could get him to shut the hell up (Muxing, incidentally, replaced Fried Fish, which was his previous favourite shouting phrase) was to think the way a child thinks.

"Muxing!" he shouted.
"Oh, I understand!" I yelled back in Japanese. "You love Muxing, don`t you?"
"Eh?"
"You love Muxing! You love her. You luuuuurrrvvve her. Mwamwamwa you want to kisssss her."
"No! I don`t love Muxing!"
"You do!"
"I don`t!"
"You do!!! You love her! You love her so much."
"Yes!" all his little 9 year old boy mates started shouting, laughing hysterically. "You love Muxing!"
"You must love her! You must!"
"No, I don`t love Muxing!" he yelled, stamping his feet in fury, and then scampered off.

I walked past him a few minutes later, and he said absolutely nothing. Not Fried Fish, and certainly not Muxing.

That`s the thing with children. It`s all very well and good keeping your distance and behaving like an adult, as long as you remember what it`s like to be a child.

And somewhere underneath all of it, I think I still do.

Crazy Pills

I`m running out of drugs.

I tried cutting my dose by biting them in half (they taste really, really disgusting), but I`m not quite ready yet: the number of cigarettes smoked immediately tripled, breaths between smoking halved, sadness started creeping into the middle of me, and I began missing him badly and painfully again, which I cannot afford to do. So I sent mum and dad a plea.

Seven crazy pills left, I emailed. Tick tock tick tock. Need you to send more. Mum, I`m going to bet you`ve lost the prescription haven`t you.
What prescription?
The prescription I left with you.
I don`t know where it is.
Yes. Thought so. Dad?
I`m on it, he emailed. What happens if you run out?
I won`t die. But I will start crying in the loos at lunchtime again and staring at the ceiling for hours and hours and hours wishing I was someone else. And I`ve got much better things to do with my time.
Gotcha. Will get you some even I have to steal it from my doctor friend when he`s in the pub.

Dad turned the house upside down, found the slip, went to the doctors`, got another prescription, went to Boots, and then sent the following email (copied and pasted, because I cannot write like my father):

Bad news is ready for next Tuesday!! BUT: I threatened them with abuse and horses heads in beds --result ''lets make that Wednesday." SO: Said she was a fine looking lady and perhaps she'd like to go for a drink sometime --result '' I meant next Thursday.'' SO : Broke down, told her my Giro was lost in t`post and that I was having panic attacks --result ''Make it week after next and stop being a woss.'' SO: Asked her very nicely if she could possibly help for the sake of my daughter ---result: ''come back at 5.30 today and i'll make sure its done.'' There is a lesson to be learnt here but needless to say I havn't any idea what it is!! Dad xxxx

To which my mum responded to us both immediately:

Mark, if you have ever wondered why I love you, this is it.

Love makes itself known in the strangest ways, and often in what is done, rather than what is said. My dad - the man with the biggest heart in the world - doesn`t need to tell me he loves me (although he does): he shows it every single time he swoops in to save me. And if I need faith in romantic love, I don`t need to look much further than my parents. Who - for all their eccentricities - still love each other and look after each other and fight for each other, the way they both love and look after and fight for me.

The crazy pills are just the temporary lifebelt thrown to me in a storm; but the boat is my family. And when one kind of love threatens to pull me under, another kind of love always pushes me back up again.

And - luckily for me - that love will always be stronger.

Full support

Harai has been good to me this morning. I`ve been a little shaky - what with nearly dying against a rice-field fence and ruining all of my hard earned street cred in the process - so he has gone out of his way to distract me.

And I do believe he`s managed it.

Harai: (Laughing.) I am bad man. I laugh at bad thing. Look. (Shows me fax.)
Me: That`s just pretty scribbles to me. What does it say?
Harai: Sometimes, when sun goes, bad men come out. And they send message to look out bad man. This girl, little one, is walking yesterday at 10am. Sun not gone, but walking. Old man stops car, and says girl, come here. Girl walks up to car. 70 year old man in there. 170cm high.
Me: That wasn`t bright.
Harai: No. And girl says what? And old man lift up his top and show her his brassiere.
Me: His what?
Harai: His brassiere. (Cups his chest with his hands.)
Me: His bra?
Harai: (laughing). Yes. His bra. Girl upset.
Me: I bet. What colour was it?
Harai: I don`t know. It doesn`t tell me. But his t-shirt was grey.
Me: Why was he wearing a bra, Harai?
Harai: I think he is mad man. But also in Japan there is fashion for guys to wear bra.
Me: Guys?
Harai: Guys. Like me.
Me: You wear a bra?
Harai: No. But some men do. Important men. They wear it when stressed to feel.... refreshed.
Me: Refreshed? Why would they feel refreshed?
Harai: Because they under pressure and then they put bra on and they like phooooooooooooo, and they relaxed. They like I am free and easy now.
Me: I don`t believe you.
Harai: Okay. I show you.

And then he got on the internet and showed me this:

Me: Gosh. He does look relaxed. Who is it?

Harai: Environmental Governor I think. He want lots of men to wear bra.

Me: Well, I can see his point. He is very free and easy. Are you going to follow advice?

Harai: No. I am not stressed. But if I did, I wear black or red. Not pink. I am man.

There are all kinds of support in a crisis. Lacy, pink, cropped, full length, underwired and silky. Padded, layered and ruffled.

And Harai told me about all of it.

Scooby Don`t

There are so many things I want to do before I die. I want to publish a book and paraglide in front of Mount Everest and trek through Nepal and get an A level in a foreign language and be adopted by a stray kitten and be adopted by a stray child and sleep in a blanket in the desert and fall in love and visit a hanging monastery in China and scuba dive without panicking and be bought the perfect piece of jewellery without picking it first and stand up on a surfboard and see a geisha and a red squirrel and a wild polar bear.

And I have always, always wanted to own a scooter. Even though they scare me. Perhaps because they scare me.

"I`m getting a scooter," I told my dad.
"No, you`re not," he said.
"Yes I am."
"No, you`re not."
"I am."
"God, you`re so pigheaded."
"Yes, I am."
"Just like me."
"Yes, I am."
"I`m getting a scooter," I told my mum.
She cried.
"I`m getting a scooter," I told my best friend.
"Do you know yourself at all? Like, at all?"
"I`m getting a scooter," I told my sister.
"Oh for fuck`s sake."
"I`m getting a scooter," I told Harai.
"Because you are -" and then he held his finger up to his head and twisted it a few times.

So - because I`m nothing if not pigheaded - I got one. Or, more specifically, Shin gave me his old one. And - even though he asked me very nicely "not to pimp like girl" - I pimped like girl. I gave it a stripy seat and gold fish stickers and a little diamante cross. I went on the internet and ordered reflective red stars so that I would be visibly cool at night time. I scrubbed it and patted it and sang to it and I named it Scooby. And I pottered around on it all weekend: down to the beach, to the shops (when I didn`t actually need anything from the shops: I just wanted to drive to the shops), round and round the back streets at 30kph like a little old lady joy rider, wearing my pink coat and the white helmet with permanent marker drawings all over it. Bursting with pride because I was so free, and so brave, and proving everyone and their assumption in my crapness so wrong.

And, today, I was going to tell my parents that I had, in fact, got a scooter. And that - contrary to expectations - I was extremely capable, sensible, good at driving and unlikely to die at all.

This morning, I crashed it.

The drive to school is a long one: 20 km through rice fields. But I was careful. Heeding Shin`s advice ("take it eeeaaazzzy, Noppo"), I took the back roads, I stayed in the middle of my lane, I indicated and checked my mirrors, I never went above 30km an hour and I only put my iPod in one ear so that I could hear whatever incandescent road rage was happening behind me. I added an extra 5ks to my trip to avoid the roads with trucks, and I sat properly so that my posture was exemplary. And when I got to school - about 50 minutes later - I was absolutely full of it: specifically drove past the entrance so that I could give the clustered teachers and students a little regal wave, and then turned into the car park to put my pretty, pimped up bike somewhere prominent. Turned it off, took my helmet off and grinned at about twenty (awestruck, I thought) open mouthed teenagers.

"You can`t park there," one of the teachers shouted at me. "You can park nearer the school, in the bike area."
"Okay!" I screamed back gaily, holding my helmet under one arm like they do in the films and flicking my messy blonde hair the way they also do in films (despite the fact that it was stuck to my head, which it absolutely never is in films).

And then I turned it back on and shot into the fence.

In fact, I didn`t just shoot into the fence. Terror and humiliation caused me to hold on to the accelerator - instead of letting go (who knew?!) - and so I shot into the fence, and then powered myself into the cement water ditch running along side it. The bike mangled with the fence, got stuck in the ditch; the helmet crashed to the floor, and - in the meantime - Harai was pegging it across the carpark shouting "Hollllllllyyyyyyyy!!!"

By the time I had finally worked out that I had to stop accelerating into the fence, the front basket had been ripped off the front of the bike, I was bright red and shaking like a leaf, and every single one of my students and colleagues was open mouthed for an entirely different reason.

"Are you hurting?" Harai said as he pulled up next to me, absolutely horrified.
I covered my face with my hands.
"No. But I couldn`t be more pissed off with myself if I tried. I am such a loser."
"You look quite cool before bang, though," he reassured me. "Nice pink coat."

I`m so sorry, I emailed Shin as soon as I had stopped trembling and swearing. I broke your bike.
ARE YOU OKAY? he emailed back.
Yes. But the bike isn`t. I mashed up the basket.
Don`t worry. The bike is indifferent.
Yes, I replied drily. That bike is totally indifferent.

It doesn`t matter what I do. It doesn`t matter how careful I am, or how slow I go, or how brave I am: I am crap. Inherently, genetically crap. And while I`m not giving Scooby up, I`m going home tonight and I am insuring myself up to the hilt. Because while I can`t let my inevitable crapness stop me from doing things - otherwise my life will be as terrible as my skills are - I can certainly make sure that when both my legs are broken, somebody else is paying for it.

Owning a scooter might be on my list of things to do before I die, but if this morning is anything to go by that might be sooner than I hoped. And that irrational fear of scooters? It might be a little more rational than I thought. Which only gives me one more reason to keep going: the conquering of all things that scare me.

That, and being totally and utterly pigheaded.

Flashback

Number seven has just made a hussy out of me.

I had to get one. Nobody could logically expect me to live for two entire months on my own. Anything could happen in two months; things could be done and seen that would never be done and seen again. Plus I could never just have one: I need a little one too, for when I'm drunk, or in a nightclub, or I can't be bothered with the weight of something important. A little fling.

I spent a long time deciding: touching them all, looking them up and down, playing with all their buttons. But this one was perfect. Shop soiled, and a third of the price it should have been. Touched by many, many strangers. It had seen better days, it was missing a few essential parts - like a warranty - and it was therefore exactly what I was looking for.

I bought it, felt pretty pleased with myself, took it home, unwrapped it and took my first long, hard look at it.

The camera looked back at me in silence. And then my stomach shrank.

"I've...." I whispered to it. "I've..."
We continued to stare each other out.
"Yes," the camera said. "Say it."
"I've seen you before, haven't I."
"Yes. You have."
"I've.... Oh God. I've owned you before, haven't I."
"Yes."

And I had. I don't know when. I don't remember what we did, or where we went, or the memories we created. I don't know where it went wrong, or where I threw it away. I don't think it was this year - have a vague suspicion it was a year or two ago - but I have definitely, without a shadow of a doubt, owned this exact camera before. Same brand, same make, same colour. All of it.

I hung my head.

"Perhaps we should pretend that this didn't just happen," I told it. "I've changed. I'm not the person I used to be."
"We'll just see about that, won't we," the camera said, getting snootily back into its case. "We'll just see about that."

If there has ever been a wake up call in the world of photographic promiscuity, I think that was probably it. And while it's still only a fling - it's not the white Olympus Pen - I'm going to treat it a little bit better this time round.

Because you never know when the past will come back to shoot you.

Gamma girl

It`s nice to be funny.

Funny`s important. Funny`s what makes beautiful things more so, and ugly and horrible things disappear as far as they can. But it`s nice to be funny because you`ve gone out of your way to try and be funny. Rather than being funny because you`re crap.

"Why are you laughing?" I demanded last night, when my dad seemed incapable of stopping.
"You`re brilliant," he told me, as if I didn`t already know.
"Yes, but why are you laughing?"
"You`re going to... No. I have to ask you to say it again. Hang on. I`m composing myself."
Dad composed himself.
"I`m going to start cycling to work. There and back. Every day."
Dad started sniggering again.
"No, no; you forgot the punchline. How far is it?"
"30 kilometres."
And dad shouted with laughter again.
"Why are you laughing?" I screamed at the computer, lifting my chin with what I like to think was a show of righteous indignation.
"I`m laughing," dad said leaning forwards, "because that is the most ridiculous thing I`ve ever heard. And if it`s not the most ridiculous thing I`ve ever heard, it`s only because I`ve known you for 28 years."
"I am not ridiculous! I am totally serious!"
"Exactly. Two days, your last cycling-to-work scheme lasted, from what I can remember, and that was 2 miles. And then we had to sell your bike because you never touched it again."
"I`m different. I`ve changed." I then looked at the ceiling and wailed - mortally offended - "Why won`t anyone believe meeeeeeee?"
And then dad started laughing so hard he had to go and get a glass of water.

I started my earnest, eager, totally serious cycling-to-work scheme this morning. I got up at 6am on the dot, I put on my sports wear - almost entirely unworn - and my trainers (absolutely unworn). I got my little bottle of water, and charged my iPod and put a change of clothes and a towel into the little plastic basket I attached with shoelaces to the back of the BaBaBicycle. And then - with a proud toss of my head - I jumped on the bike, pushed off from the kerb and looked immensely forward to the moment when I would get to school, alight with sheeny, prettily flushed dignity and email my dad to say I told you I could do it. Now sod right off, father.

It took me two kilometres to realise four things. One: I couldn`t really breathe, and I couldn`t really see because the sweat was in my eyes. Two: both tyres were flat, and I hadn`t heard them rattling because my iPod was too loud. Three: the garage was shut and I didn`t know how to pump up my own tyres. Four: I was already late for work.

So - having thrown the bottle of water in a rage and then parked my bike so I could go and pick it up again - I had to cycle back home on my flat little tyres, have a shower, get dressed, and drive to work.

Which was not exactly the I told you so I had in mind.

The problem, I think, is that I`m essentially a Gamma girl, under some illusion that if I try hard enough I might be an Alpha. I`m crap at everything, and yet I`m totally convinced - with an enduring, undying faith - that I am a mere four weeks away from being perfect: fit, beautiful, healthy, sane, thin, successful, rich, adored. Cycling 30 kms a day? No worries, my head says. I don`t fucking think so, my body shouts back. Budding successful photographer? says my head. Easy. And then my body gets in the way and loses seven cameras in one year. Write a novel? Fall in love with a kind, handsome creative genius and make him love me? Learn Japanese? Save lots of money? Learn to surf? Not a problem, my head says, and then my inherent crapness gets in the way and makes everyone laugh at my futile little attempts. Which is not necessarily always the reaction I`m looking for.

Awe. That`s what I`d quite like. Admiration, and a little bit of straight faced awe.

Tomorrow morning, I`m getting up and I`m trying again. I`m getting up and I`m working out how to pump tyres, and I`m buying my seventh camera, and I`m writing another chapter of my novel, and I`m running three miles and I`m eating healthily and I`m not buying any beer or cheese and I`m not watching America`s Top Model and I`m probably going to study Japanese for a bit and plan my imminent trek in Nepal (which will be easy, obviously, seeing as 2kms on a bike on a flat road nearly killed me). I`m going to become serene and not-at-all-unbalanced and loveable and beautiful and sophisticated and I`m going to blow my hair dry in the morning insead of tying it up in a ponytail while it`s still wet so I look like some kind of Robert Palmer video.

I am going to get up and I`m going to keep going, because - somewhere, under all the crapness and constant reaching and falling - there is somebody amazing: I am certain of it. And if there isn`t?

Maybe with all the trying I`ll find somebody nearly as good instead.

Somebody who makes people laugh.

Kancho

Here`s a thought for the day:

When you`re sad, when you`re overwhelmed by the futility of existence, just remember that at that very moment, somewhere in the world - probably Japan, but possibly Korea - somebody somewhere is trying to stick their index fingers up a stranger`s bottom in public, and somebody somewhere is trying to get them to stop.

We don`t do this in England. Adults and children alike do not habitually walk around with a hand covering their bottom, in order to fend off strange and unexpected digits. We don`t have a special kind of run-away walk, with our bottoms squeezed together and our knees as close as they can get so that stray hands don`t try to thrust their way into our backsides. No: the very thought of it would appall the British. If a stranger tried to stick a finger up our bottoms - or, worse, a friend or a child - we would get them locked up, or we would get locked up, or at the very least one of us would be called gay. In Britain, we keep our bottoms to ourselves, thankyou very much, and do not in any way expect it to be publically violated for the sake of humour.

Not so in Japan. In Japan, there is a popular game called Kancho. With Kancho, the rules are simple: you make your hand into the traditional gun shape, index fingers pointing forwards, and you try and stick it up somebody`s bottom while shouting Kancho (translation? Enema). The more you achieve, and the harder you shove, the better you have done. The other person, in the meantime, has to try and defend themselves and their bottoms, and remain at all times aware enough to run away before any permanent damage is done. This is not, incidentally, some strange, underground sort of entertainment for weirdos and perverts (although I`m sure they practice it too). There`s a tv show dedicated to trying to unexpectedly Kancho celebrities, and there is a child`s cartoon that does very little else. Children do it every few minutes, and while adults try to restrain themselves, they often break down and resort to their fun, irresponsible Kanchoing days with a shrug of the shoulders and a nostalgic smile. Much as we British would perhaps play a game of Snakes and Ladders on a rainy Sunday.

It`s not restricted to the Japanese, of course. South Koreans play it too: they call it Dong Chim, which means Poo Punch. The Filapinos play it and call it Tombong (rectum). And it is done with such a guileless, joyful recklessness - such an absolute unawareness that in the rest of the world this would be seen as utterly inappropriate - that as a Westerner the only possible reaction is to stare with an open mouthed, bemused expression at fifteen year old boys (who don`t so much as touch each other in England, for fear of being accused of homosexuality) gang up and group Kancho one of their friends.

I`ve been protected from it, thus far, because you don`t Kancho a teacher, and you don`t Kancho a foreigner. It`s a basic Japanese rule: leave the bottoms of teachers and strange white aliens alone. Students and strangers are trained to bow when they see us, not try to impale us with their hands. Unfortunately, over the weekend somebody obviously aired something educational on the television and failed to tell my kindergarteners that I am exempt, because I have just spent the majority of my thirty minute lesson running away from thirty four pointed guns and trying to stop anybody from going behind me (unfortunately, with four year olds this doesn`t necessarily work: they haven`t quite worked out either the rules or the science, yet, so they just go in from the front).

I`m a big fan of many Japanese things: sashimi, cherry blossoms, manga, Sony, kimonos, cartoon chickens in leather jackets with tartare sauce on their heads. But being forced to fight to defend my backside at 9am on a Tuesday morning? I`m not such a big fan. However much I want to adapt to the Japanese way of living while I`m here, there`s an ingrained student-teacher/adult-child divide in my head, and fingers up bottoms kind of crosses it.

I`ll be sitting them all down, next lesson, for a nice, quiet, talk about things they can and cannot do to their English teacher. A nice, quiet talk where I will also be sitting down.

And when I leave Japan, rest assured that it is one game I will not be bringing with me. I`ll be leaving all your bottoms alone.

Stages

Blogging can be very scary.

The internet is so unknown, so anonymous, so large and far-reaching, that writing a blog often feels like standing on a stage, shouting lines to a one-person play with your eyes totally shut and the lights out. You don't know who is out there, or what they're hearing, or what they think. You don't know what they turned up for, or why they came back. You don't know what they want from you, or what will make them happy. And sometimes you don't know if there is anybody there at all, because often - on the nights when your eyes are squeezed shut, and the audience feels so quiet - all those unlit faces could just as well be nobody.

As my readership has very slowly grown, therefore, so my scared little eyes have gradually screwed themselves shut more firmly. Where it was once just my grandad - stumbling upon this site by accident, eighteen months ago - pieces of the whole world now sit silently in my dark theatre: all watching, all frowning or smiling or laughing in silence. And it is so hard not to let my writing change because of it. It's hard not to get frightened, and just write what will be easy to write, and easy to read. It's hard not to just stop talking entirely, out of fear of saying something wrong. Out of fear or saying too much, or saying too little.

And it is at that point - the point where honesty totally dies - where writing of any kind becomes absolutely and totally fucking pointless. So here it is: the honesty I am holding out to the dark audience, just because if I don't... I might as well get off the stage entirely.

I am struggling to write. And I am finding it harder to write because I am finding it harder to feel. And I am finding it harder to feel, because I am taking huge amounts of medication that have been designed specifically to stop me doing just that. Anti-depressants that do what they promise to do: anti-depress. And make me completely and utterly numb in the process.

I am bi-polar. I have always been so - was a strange, weird little girl - and I will always be so, because the doctor says it will never go away. And I am utterly ashamed of it. The patches of uncontrollable mania: the trembling, the bouncing, the inability to think straight or see straight or feel anything but nauseous over-excitement and the conviction that I am unstoppable, possibly immortal. Followed, inevitably, by patches of overwhelming, core-cutting, invisible darkness that tells me I am unstartable and ready to die. The ups where I don't know how to feel or what to do, and the lows where I don't know how to feel or what to do. The constant, exhausting flinging between one state and another, with - thank God - a gap in between of relative peace where I regret all I did and said before, and fear intensely all I may say and do afterwards. The wolf that comes and steals me away from all normal, healthy relationships, because I don't know what is right and what is usual, and I don't know when or how to walk away from what is not. Because "normality" is just a word, to me, and means nothing. It's just the space between the two states that I cling to because it doesn't hurt so much.

And, as sick as I have been in my life, nothing has ever made me as sick as heartbreak. Nothing has ever pulled apart my sanity as far as those eighteen months of loving, and questioning, and believing, and unbelieving: of not knowing what is real and what is lies, of trusting, and losing, and having the essence of myself taken apart every day and chewed up by someone else. Nothing has ever broken me apart as much as being told that I am loved for everything I am, and then being told that I never could be. That I am unloveable, and unlikeable. That I am "mental", by a man I only ever wanted to be sane for. By a man who was also on medication for the way his mind worked.

And so, to survive - so  that I would eat again, so that my periods would start again - I went back on medication. On the highest dose I have ever been on. And I have taken it every single day, now, since the breakup. And the hurt has slowly, slowly stopped. And while the thought of all of it hasn't stopped, the pain has. I feel nothing anymore. Not for him, not for her, not for love, and not for the past. Not for anything. At all. Nothing.

But I can't write. The numbness has gotten into the corners of me: curled into the creases of my mind, and around my toes and my fingers. My brain is thinking nothing; my heart is feeling nothing. When I laugh, I can't feel it; when I cry, I can't feel it. And while the future has come back for me - the belief that perhaps I am worth something, that I can do something - it is in a vague, unbothered kind of way. A yeah, I guess, but does it really matter? kind of way. A stoned kind of way. And while happiness has come back, it is in a faded, hey dude, whatever, you know? kind of way. A medically enhanced kind of  way.

And I don't know what to do. Whether to be at peace for a while, and unable to do the thing that matters most to me, or to be in pain, and able to write. Or hang on, and hope that something changes: that my emotions come back, but only the good ones. I don't know which me to choose. I don't know whether to use this as an emotional holiday to piece myself back together, or to stop so that whatever piecing I do is permanent. Whether to risk going back there - to the scariest place I have ever been - or to risk never really feeling life again. Or to give myself enough time to be myself again and take the help I have been given.

But I know one thing for certain. For better or worse, I have built this stage and I am standing on it. I am still speaking. And without honesty, I am letting everyone else who is ever sick, or ever unhappy, or ever mental - who struggles against the dark, and against the light, and against themselves - do it on their own. I am saying with my silence that they should be ashamed of who they are, and what they feel, and what they could be. I am saying that not being perfect is something to hide, when it isn't. And I am doing that to myself as well.

My eyes are still shut, and the audience is still dark. But I'm not going to be frightened anymore, and I'm not going to be scared. Because it's a big stage, and honesty should be the only reason that any of us are up here.

It should be the only reason any of us are writing at all.

Number seven

I just lost my sixth camera.

Maybe it's irony, maybe it's sod's law, maybe it's getting really really excited about Father Christmas imminently getting me a better camera and therefore putting my cheap, non-pretty, non-white one down somewhere in Miyazaki and leaving it there, but I lost it. Six. In one year.

"That's six," my friends pointed out ingeniously as I rifled through my bag, cussing like a sailor.
"I know."
"In one year."
"I know."
And then - for some reason I am going to try my hardest not to identify - they all cheered, high fived each other and exchanged money.

I wonder if this is what life is like, but on a smaller scale. Lose a camera: hurt. Get another, less nice camera. Lose a camera: hurt a little less. Get another, even less nice camera. Lose a camera: hurt a little less. And so on and so forth until you're fifteen years and twenty really, really crap cameras in and all you can think is meh. I didn't like it anyway. And the habit's kind of worn the pain out.

"You okay?" one of my friends asked after he'd pocketed his ill gotten gains and wiped the tears of joy from his face.
"Yeah. It's not exactly a new experience, is it. The sting left a decade ago."
"You're going to get another one?"
"Yep. And then I'm going to start another book. It's called A Life Spent Buying Cameras. Because there's a really big chance that when I die, buying cameras is the only really consistent, reliable thing I'll have ever done."
"You know what I think?"
"What?"
"Maybe you can learn to stop leaving them on trains."
"We've all got a destiny, Shin. And for better or worse, losing cameras and replacing them again appears to be mine."

I'm getting another camera, and I've decided that the pattern needs to stop. This one is not going to be even cheaper and more terrible, just so that it means nothing to me. It's going to be big, and bright, and expensive. And instead of not caring on purpose so that it doesn't hurt when it goes, I'm going to love it so much that when I lose it it'll hurt again like it did in the beginning. I'm going to put myself on the line again. So that I'm no longer so horribly resigned to my own inevitable failure, and no longer investing in my own inescapable crapness.

I'm buying number seven, and pretending it was number one all over again. Because what the alternative says about what life does to us and to me and to cameras is too intolerable.

And all I can hope is two things. One: that this is one I can hold onto. And two: that nobody tells my dad.

Red bikes and cameras

I like getting older.

I don`t like being much less pretty than I was five years ago, and I don`t like making that mmmpppphhh sound every time I bend over to pick something up; I don`t particularly like discovering wrinkles under spots, and I`m not fond of knowing that I`m less "of a catch" every day, should I ever want to get caught. I`m not keen on the fact that every day I`m closer to dying, and I don`t delight in the fact that I can`t really argue when people call me "a woman" anymore because "a girl" days are long gone and "a lady" days have never been and will probably never be.

On the whole, though, I like it. I like that I can now apply liquid eyeliner absolutely perfectly, and have discovered through experimentation that putting soy sauce in tomato pasta sauce is very nice; I like that I can eat whipped cream for breakfast and not feel guilty, and know lots of facts that don`t interest anybody but me. I like that the thin, pretty, shy girl I hated when I was a teenager has turned into a fatter, uglier, more confident girl that I don`t hate as much anymore, and I like that the body I was so ashamed of when it was almost perfect I love now it`s definitely not. I like that almost nothing in the world scares me anymore, and I like that with age I have learnt to wield whatever talents I have with ease, instead of dragging them around with me like dumb-bells in my back pocket. And I love that I can start conversations with "when I was young" and then give the kind of patronising advice I was born to give: the irrelevant kind that nobody wants but gets anyway.

What I do not love, however, is no longer getting excited about presents.

Apprehensive, yes. Vaguely hopeful, definitely. Pleasantly surprised? Very, very occasionally. But excited? The kind of excited you used to get as a child, when you begged Santa and mum and dad every single hour for four months for a red bike, and then couldn`t sleep for the month before Christmas because you were thinking about your red bike, and dreaming about red bikes and telling everyone you were getting a red bike and deciding exactly where you were going to ride your red bike and what kind of bell your red bike would have attached to it and what everyone would say about your brand new, perfect, very own red bike? And then, on Christmas morning, you would wake up at 5am and run downstairs with your heart in your ears to find your red bike under the tree, and you thought that you would explode with red-bike happiness?

No. You don`t get that as an adult. The ability to go and get your own red bike, in - say - March, chips away at it. The fact that you already have a red bike, and a blue bike - and you remember the green bike you used to have - finishes that excitement off completely. Really wanting things - objects, not dreams and ambitions of the future (they die a little later on) - fades after childhood: for the pleasure of independence we give up the joy of being dependent.

Which is why I have been somewhat thrown off balance in my desperate desire for the white Olympus Pen E-PL1 mini digital SLR camera with a 14-42mm lens and a brown leather shoulder strap and maybe a little brown leather bag to put it in.

I want it. I want it more than I can remember wanting any inanimate object since I was a child. I go to bed dreaming about it. I think about in the car on the way to school, and in the bath, and while I`m talking to somebody other than myself. I spend hours reading reviews of it on the internet: looking at specifications, at hints and tips, at example photos. I carry the specs flier in my bag. I research different prices and different kits, and I look at photos from different angles. I go into the local electronic shop and I play with it for hours: test it out, pretend I`m carrying it, check in a mirror to see how cute I look holding it (really cute). I google accessories and additions every few minutes, and I`ve even been studying photography online so that I give this camera the best possible home.

I am, to all extents and purposes, stalking a camera.

There are probably deep, psychological reasons behind it - I have always loved photography and never thought I deserved to take it seriously: leaving my never-ending list of photographer ex-boyfriends to all do that and watching them enviously and admiringly from the sidelines - and I`m sure I could analyse the hell out of it, but I`m not going to. Bottom line: it`s beautiful, it`s lovely, it makes me happy and I want it. And I can`t afford it even slightly which means I am relying on the God of Christmas-and-Birthday to give it to me.

"Holly," my dad said when I told him (he is one component of this particular God; my mum and grandparents make up the other elements). "How many cameras have you had this year?"
I hung my head.
"Five."
"How many have you lost?"
"Two."
"How many have you broken?"
"Three."
"And you think this is a good idea?"
"If I never get anything nice because I may lose or break it, I`ll never get anything at all."
"I don`t think that may is the right word here."
"But daaaaaaaaaad....I really, really want it. I`ll treasure it forever and ever and never let it out of my sight and sleep with it next to my side and clean it every morning and take it with me everywhere and use it in Nepal and India and Tibet and love it and worry about it and"
"Alright, Holly. It`s your present. What you do with it is your business."
"So can I have one?"
"Yes. From all of us, for both your birthday and Christmas combined."
"Can I have one now?"
"No. Because it`s not Christmas. Or your birthday."
"But I want one now."
"But it`s neither your birthday nor Christmas. So you can`t have one now."
"But ddaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaddddddd..."

And I tried and tried to get him to change his mind. I pointed out, about fifteen times, that if I miss out on lots of great photos between now and Christmas, won`t that sort of defeat the point in having a truly great camera? And if I`m going to Kyoto won`t I need something to record it with? And shouldn`t I be practicing with it before the festive season starts? And won`t it be easier to get online before the Christmas frenzy? And - resorting to a threat - if he has a problem, can`t I just go and buy it myself and then put the money back in in December?

And also: I want it now.

But it didn`t work. I have to wait until December the 7th and no amount of whining and moaning and grumping is going to change that, apparently. If I go and buy it myself they just won`t send the money. It`ll arrive in wrapping paper from the UK in time to open it on my actual birthday, and not before that. No matter how many times I pout and scream but daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad into my webcam. No matter how great my reasons are, or how manipulative I am trying to be.

When you exchange the pleasure of independence for the excitement of dependence, it appears you exchange all of it. And that means I have to learn how to wait, just as I used to. And I`m going to work myself into a frenzy of childish excitement, just as I used to. And when I get it? I`ve got a feeling my heart is going to be in my ears all over again. A red bike for a girl who already has one.

Getting older? It`s great. Especially when you work out how not to.

Wolves

"Japanese children are so well behaved," I told my sister last night. "Honestly. They`re so sweet and they`re not violent in the slightest."

And this morning they decided to attack each other.

Twenty five years, I`ve been playing What`s The Time, Mr Wolf. On and off, obviously. I`ve done things in between - sleeping, eating pizza - but assuming my first game was at roughly the age of four, and my last game (possibly ever) was this morning, that`s very nearly a quarter of a century of sporadically running away from wolves. Twenty five years, and today was the first time that any kind of school nurse has ever come out of her office, put her hands on her hips and given me a look that says: and they put you in charge of children?

This morning, my English lesson was like the Battle of Hastings, except I don`t think anybody is going to sew a tapestry about it. I walked them through the rules - get as close to me as you can, and when I spin round you have to run back to base before I catch you - but apparently what they heard was: this is a twenty minute opportunity to put your classmates in hospital. There was blood, there were tears, there were bitten lips, there was vague concussion. The cracks of little foreheads resonated around the playground, inevitably reaching the Headmaster`s office; the screams of pain were indistinguishable from the victory screams of those who had caused them. I had cunningly amended the language, in a half-hearted effort to teach them something ("What`s the time, Mr Wolf" was replaced with "What vegetable do you like?" and "It`s 2 o clock" became - ingenuinously and oddly, when screamed at top notch - "I like carrots"), but I don`t think one of the children had a clue what they were shouting. All they cared was that they were outside, it was sunny, and as soon as I spun round and shouted "Vegetables!" it meant: try and kill each other.

"You`re supposed to run back!" I kept shouting, having spun round as I was supposed to. "What are you all doing?"

Six of the girls were standing absolutely still in the middle of the playground, waiting to get `caught`. Three boys had disappeared in the wrong direction and were kicking the hell out of each other. Four children were lying, howling on the floor, and being jumped over by the unbothered remaining warriors. The rest were pushing, shoving, thumping, spinning each other around by their t-shirts, bleeding from the nose and creating as much noise as their vocal chords could muster. And after a lesson doing Japanese History, you can bet that they mustered a fair amount.

After five minutes, I gathered them together and tried to explain the rules again.

"When I turn round," I told them, via the power of charades, "you run back to base. In straight lines. Do you understand? Not in circles. Not over each other or under each other. Not around the playground. Not around me. Not via punching your friend. Just run in a normal, bog standard line. There is absolutely no need to be breaking each others noses. Okay?"
"Okay," they all said.

And then they promptly did it again. By the last ten minutes, I was simply picking up the wounded from the floor, moving them to the side, shouting "Harai, we`ve got another one" and going back to collect more. I felt a little bit like Forest Gump in the Vietnam war.

"I`m so sorry," I said afterwards to their teacher, bowing as low as I could. "I`m so, so sorry. I`ve never seen Mr Wolf turn into The Lord of the Flies so quickly."
"Oh, no," she reassured me, bowing back. "It was ... fun."
And then we both looked at a classroom full of bruised, bleeding, panting, howling children - clutching their legs, their ankles, their heads, the walls and shouting "again! Again, Holly Sensei! That was awesome!" - and decided, without actually saying anything, that we`d be playing Snap next lesson. Something involving cards and perhaps, if we are feeling risky, dice. Something that doesn`t involve cringing with my hands across my eyes, praying with every ounce of me that children don`t start dying in front of me.

As far as I know, What`s The Time, Mr Wolf is supposed to involve one wolf and lots of scared children; not lots of wolves and one scared teacher. And the blood and bruises are supposed to be imaginary: not real and in front of the school nurse.

Which goes to show, I suppose, that children are always little monsters, given the right conditions.

Even the sweet little Japanese ones.

Saturday Morning

Had a party. Drank too much.

That is all for today.

Blonde Ninja

Finally. All this time in Japan, and I`ve finally turned into a Ninja.

Two facts about mosquitos: they bite 500 times more often when it`s a full moon, and they prefer blondes. It is a full moon, and I am blonde, therefore the last four nights have been spent, predominantly, being wound up by yet another mosquito. Never mind the fact that "mosquito season is over"; never mind the fact that I`ve technically got a mosquito repellent, and mosquito net up at all the windows. Never mind that I`m not sure I have any blood left. This mosquito was in, she was staying, and she was hell-bent on irritating the crap out of me.

Worse, unlike her ill-fated buddy a few months ago - drunk on me and stupid because of it - this one was wiley. She didn`t fly around while I was reading, landing heavily on my leg and sticking her nose sharply in to it. No: she was invisible and silent every single night until I turned the light out and started falling asleep, at which point she would start whispering in my ear. As soon as I sat up and turned the light on, she would disappear. As soon as I turned the light back off again, she would turn up again. And so on and so forth, until I was worn out and covered in big, swollen bites that clearly were the result of her going for long victory dances on my arms, legs, chin and neck, and snacking whenever she took the fancy.

By the end of the third night of the full moon, my thou shalt not kill vow was firmly withdrawn, and the cat and mouse game had become the most important part of my evening. Intelligence, wit, speed, instincts: I used all of mine, and they still weren`t enough to match a mosquito. I would turn the lights up, take my clothes off and lie very still, with as much skin exposed as possible, inviting her to bite me so I could kill her: she didn`t. I would pretend to read a book, when actually I was scanning the room with my hand raised: she stayed away. I pretended to fall asleep with a torch by my side; I covered myself from head to toe with a sheet; I faked snoring. I sat with the insecticide spray poised, and my finger on the button, for hours: book or computer on my lap, unable to concentrate on anything but her death. Nothing. And the minute I turned the light out and dozed off, she would target me again: mocking me, eating me, celebrating on me. Waking me up with her sweet little nothings and her violent and irritating blood lust.

Last night - when enough was, finally, enough (I had a bite on my elbow so big it hurt to bend it) - I pulled out the big guns: or, I should say, the big gun. The bazooka of all sprays: a bottle of insecticide so big, so yellow, and with such a long nozzle and fierce pressure, that Pulp Fiction music starts playing in my head as soon as I hold it. And then, with the bazooka in my right hand, and my finger on the button, I turned the lights out and went to sleep.

She didn`t stand a chance. When she came a-whispering last night and woke me up, I didn`t sit up, I didn`t roll over: I didn`t even open my eyes. I simply lifted the bazooka, aimed it at my left ear and shot her. And then I sleepily rolled over, turned on the light and confirmed - once and for all - that she had completed her final victory dance and nibbled her last earlobe.

"You are like ninja," Harai told me this morning.
"I know," I said proudly. "It was like being in Kill Bill or something. Except Kill Bill in pyjamas and with a much smaller, blood sucking villain. Like a miniature vampire Kill Bill."
"What is Kill Bill?"
"She`s like the heroes on the front of your folder, except yellow."
"Cool."
"I`m definitely more intelligent than a mosquito, though, right Harai? I mean, I`ve proved it, haven`t I. That`s a relief."
There was a thoughtful pause, and then Harai said:
"Yes. You are more clever than mosquito. Just."

Mosquitos kill more people than anything else in the world: more than wars, more than famine, more than cars. At least 2 million people a year die because of mosquitos, and in Africa alone 700 million people are infected with disease as a result of them. And, therefore, what the world really needs is a Ninja that can both attract and defeat them: can lure them in with their blood, and kill them with their speed and wit. A blonde who is actually more intelligent than a mosquito.

And I think that Ninja might be me.

Just.