100 Cranes

Over the last four weeks, Harai has been very busy making little paper cranes. The bird kind, rather than the large metal construction kind.

He's been doing this because he has even less to do at school than I do; as my assistant, he doesn't even have to pretend to plan classes that are all essentially identical while everybody pretends they haven't noticed that I'm teaching the same thing over and over again. In fact, in more general terms, he doesn't actually have to assist me either: he just has to stare out of the window until I whistle at him from the front of the room to help me hold up some laminated pictures of farmyard animals. I like to think of him as the Debbie McGee to my Paul Daniels, except - thank God - wearing a suit over the top of his lycra.

When he reached origami crane number twenty seven, I asked him what the hell he was doing.

"They're very pretty," I added, "but what are you going to do with twenty seven small paper birds? Make a teeny tiny Hitchcock film?"
He looked affronted. "This is a very important part of the Japanese religion," he told me.
"Which one? Buddhism or Shintoism?"
"I don't know," he admitted. "Anyway, we make a hundred paper cranes, and then we string them all together. And then we hang them up in a shrine, and we make a....a..... how to say it --- wish."
"A wish? Like, for a new bike or something?"
Harai stared at me in horror. "This is religion, Holly, not Santa Claus. You wish for the health and happiness of a loved one. Or world peace."
"World peace? A hundred paper cranes for world peace?"
"Yes. So I am making a hundred cranes."
I looked at the desk, covered in origami. "Well, I'm very impressed," I told him, because I was very impressed. "You're just like a Japanese Miss World. Except short and male and wearing a tie."
"I'm not Miss World," he informed me soberly, and continued folding his paper.

He reached forty two today, during an origami session that I attempted to join in and failed horribly (origami requires skill, patience and attention to detail: three qualities I lack in abundance). I threw my scrumpled up bit of green paper on the desk.
"What's that?" Harai asked me.
"It's a frog." I bounced it up and down a few times. "See? It looks just like a frog. So how many have you got left?"
"Fifty eight."
"And how's world peace looking?"
Harai folded the paper again. "I've decided I want a Playstation," he said after a short pause. "They have a new one. I don't want world peace. I want a new Playstation."
"You're going to take your cranes to a shrine and ask God for a new Playstation?"
"Yes."
"What about world peace?"
"The Japanese government can sort that out. I think that's their business. My business is getting a Playstation."
"Right. Well, for your sake, Harai - and for the sake of your eternal soul - I sincerely hope that the Japanese government are all making cranes for world peace as fast as they possibly can."
"It's all they do," he said. "Sit around and make hundreds of cranes and string them together. Nice government. Very nice government. Japan is safe. And now I can have my Playstation."

Harai won't be getting his Playstation, though. Not if the cranes have anything to do with it.

"Harai?" I said a couple of minutes later. "If I help you, can I have it?"
"You want my 100 cranes?"
"Yes please."
"Why would I give you my 100 cranes?"
"Somebody I love is really sick, and I need to wish for them."
"Not because you want a Playstation too?"
"I promise I won't be wishing for a Playstation. Hand on my heart. Sick loved one only."
 Harai looked at his little basket full of cranes and sighed. "Okay. Fine. I guess I don't need two Playstations." And then he looked at my origami attempt. "But I don't think God will be happy with your frog," he added. "You need to learn how to make cranes too. You give him that frog and he's going to take your Playstation away."
"I don't have a Playstation."
"Then he'll take mine, and that's worse."

Starting today, I'm making 100 cranes. Because - luckily for all of us - the Japanese government have already got world peace covered.

Which means that all of my wishes can go exactly where they're needed most: to my loved one.

Being Craig

Song lyrics can be fickle things.

For me, they`re the heart of music: the words inside are what I look for first. In fact, to truly enjoy music as music I have to cut them out altogether, which is why the songs that mean the most to me are always either wordless or spoken in a language I don`t understand.

For others, song lyrics are there mainly to give the melody something to shape around. What is said is less important than how it is said, or sung (which is, presumably, how Britney Spears managed to warble her way into a fortune). Thus inserting the word `ooh` or `baby` or `yeeeeah` or `zigazigah` doesn`t cause these people to flinch, because the word is just an addition that allows the singer to add another note, and for that note the listener is happy. While, for me, I want to take these pointless padded words and throttle them - and the singer - until they`re dead and silent.

There are other people out there, however, for whom song lyrics simply don`t exist. Somewhere between the stereo, or the iPod, or the radio, and the ears of the person listening, the words of music are wiped out entirely: unecessary, ignored and unwanted. And my friend Yuki is one of these people.

"I love this song," she says at intervals whenever we play a CD in the car. "Neh neh neh neh neh neh NEH NEH yes, baby neh neh neh OOOOOOO." That`s her singing, by the way. Not a self congratulatory dance. Five minutes later she says: "I really love this song too! Neh neh, neh neh neh, neh, ooooooh, you know, neh neh NEH."
"Yuki," I said eventually. "Why are you surprised? It`s your CD. And on that topic, why don`t you know the words to any of these songs? It`s your CD."
"What words?"
"The words. You know: what the person is singing."
She shrugged. "I can`t really hear any. It`s all in English."
"But, Yuki, you`re fluent in English. And you neh neh neh Japanese songs too."
"I just don`t really hear any. Holly? Will you make me a CD of songs like this?"
"Like what?"
"Happy, dance songs to party to?"
I listened to what was playing on the CD, and started laughing. "Yuki, this is called Torn, by Natalie Imbruglia."
"Yeah, I love it. So happy and summer party."
"Torn, Yuki. Like, ripped. Broken."
"Torn? What is torn?"
"Her heart. It`s a song about heartbreak. `Nothing`s fine, I`m torn, this is how I feel: I`m cold and I`m alone, lying naked on the floor`. By no stretch of the imagination could this be called a party song, Yukes. Unless it`s a really, really sick party."
Yuki opened her mouth in shock, and then paused. "Why is Natalie lying naked on the floor? What happened to her?"
"I think it`s a metaphor for feeling vulnerable and exposed."
"Wow. This isn`t a party song at all." Then she looked at me. "Unless we`re talking about you at your last party."
"I wasn`t naked, Yuki."
"You were definitely lying on the floor though. Cold and alone."
"I was definitely cold, but sadly I wasn`t alone because people kept jumping on top of me. But thanks anyway." And then I ignored the continued comparison between a drunk Smale and a metaphorical Imbruglia and went through the rest of the song, translating for her - from English to English - and trying to explain the inexplicable (torn skies, for instance).

It was only when she got to Stand By Me, however, that I finally put my foot down. Yuki could mutilate Imbruglia all she liked, but goddamit: she would be leaving Ben E King alone.

"Ne ne NEH ne ne NEH neneneneNEH," she started, "no I won`t be a Craig, noo IIIIIIIII won`t be a Craig."
"Yuki!" I shouted, with my shoulders starting to shake again. "Who the hell is Craig?"
"You know: Craig. Famous Craig. The guy in this song."
"And what happens to famous Craig?" I asked, shoulders shaking harder.
"I don`t know, but I think nobody wants to be him."
I squeaked with laughter. "It`s afraid, Yuki. Afraid. No, I won`t be afraid."
"Ooooooh." Yuki listened to it again. "That makes a little bit more sense. I`ve always wondered who Craig was."
"There is no Craig."
"I kind of miss Craig now," she admitted. And then she completed the track, singing "ne ne ne NE NE afraid, ne ne ne NE NE afraid," and looking at me proudly, like a dog waiting for a biscuit.

Words mean different things to different people: they always do. And nowhere is that more obvious than in songs. Where, to some people, words mean everything, and to some people they mean nothing, and to some people they mean anything they want them to mean.

And maybe that was always the point of music in the first place: to give us the words we`re looking for and can`t find anywhere else, or the silence we`re looking for and can`t find anywhere else.

And to help us to not be a Craig.

Roots

The end is always hard, even when it’s right.

I’ve just handed in my notice. I’ll be flying out of Japan for good on the 12th of July; two months today exactly, I’ll be in England. And I’m finding it difficult to imagine already: finding it impossible to know what life will be like when Japan isn’t my home anymore. When my students aren’t my students, and my house isn't my house, and my scooter isn’t my scooter, and my bed isn’t my bed. When the rice fields I drive past aren’t my rice fields, and my spot on the beach isn’t my spot; when the shrine in the cave isn’t my shrine. When this country isn’t the one I come back to, and tie myself to, and dream in and about. I’m finding it hard to imagine my life without Japan in it, or what it will turn into.

And even as I start to pull away - as I start to gently tug my roots away from the land that has been mine for two years - it’s already hurting. This isn’t just the only country I have ever belonged to by choice, not by birth. And it isn't just the only country I have loved with all of me: loved the intricacies and the contradictions and the beauty and the strangeness, not because I come from it, but because I wanted to be here.

It is more than that. Japan is the country where I have learned to love children: to adore everything they are, and everything they have the potential to be. It’s the country in which I have created the strongest memories of my life - some beautiful, some painful - and it’s the country I have given the most of myself to and in. It’s the place where I have finally learned how to be alone, and how to be myself, and how to heal; it’s where I have been scared, and hopeful, and ill, and happy, and free, and in love, and lonely, and full of wonder. It’s the place where I’ve learned how much I am made of, and how little. It’s the country I came to for love, and was broken by love, and came back to so that it could heal me. It’s where I discovered how brave I can be, and how kind, and how strong. And it’s where I discovered that my world was conquerable, but that I was not.

Japan has been everything to me. It has been school, and home, and student, and whipping boy, and brick wall, and lover. And it has changed me completely, because the girl that gets off the plane on the 12th of July will be nothing like the one that got on it in August 2009. She’ll be lesser in some ways, perhaps, and more broken in others, but so much greater in many more. She’ll be someone I know much better, and like more, and understand fully. And I wouldn’t have her without love, or a broken heart, and I certainly wouldn't have her without Japan.

It’s time to do the hardest thing I have ever done and the lesson Japan has taught me: to know when to let go of what I still love and move forward. It’s time to take the strength and courage I have found here and start a new and terrifying adventure. One that will give me what Japan cannot give me, and take me where Japan can no longer take me. But as I start to separate myself from the country that has changed me, and become a part of me, I know that I will fail. Because it doesn’t matter how gently I pull, some of my deepest roots are going to break.

And when I finally leave Japan, I know a part of me will stay here.

Socks

As a teacher - and I`d imagine as a parent - you get to go through childhood all over again, except from the other side of it. It`s like reading one of those books, told from different perspectives, or seeing a three dimensional shape from an angle you weren`t even aware existed. What seemed to be solid and definable and understandable suddenly flips - the candle in the middle of the page suddenly becomes two faces on the outside of it - and what should be the same thing, repeated over and over again, is actually a totally new experience.

And it can be a total pain in the arse.

Every lunch time, students and teachers in my school clean for fifteen minutes. And every lunch time for fourteen months, I`ve been fighting a battle. The battle to get children to understand what cleaning actually is.

"What are you doing?" I`ve said approximately 278 times at precisely 1:45pm. The child in question - a different child every week - looks up and points at the broom they`re holding. "Yes," I say in English because my Japanese isn`t strong enough to be faecitious yet, "I can see you have a broom. But waving it in the air doesn`t make the floor clean does it."
The child pats the floor with the broom a couple of times, looks at me again and then gazes out of the window. Sadly, I do not incite terror because I give out too many Winnie the Pooh stickers. So I grab the broom. "You have to actually sweep with it," I tell them with decreasing patience, showing them how a broom works. "Like this. Where dirt collects because you have swept it into one place."
I do a quick sweep, and then hand it to them. "Now show me."
And they get the broom again, pat the floor a couple of times look at me and then gaze back out of the window again.

In the last year one of the children has worked out how to make a sweeping motion, but now just sweeps at random in vague circles: scattering the dirt and leaving it in different places and then looking at me proudly. And they all do the same with flannels, which just sort of get flicked at random parts of wood work, and mops, which get duly soaking and then the water just gets flung around the room. Because - and I remember this clearly - when you`re a child, cleaning isn`t about making the room clean: it`s about pretending to make the room clean until everyone leaves you alone and stops trying to make you clean rooms. And there`s no concept of cause and affect - no awareness that if you don`t actually remove the dirt the room will stay dirty and it`s you that will be sitting in it, and not the teacher - so `cleaning` just involves holding the right equipment for ten minutes and assuming somebody else will do it for you if you can just wait it out long enough.

Which they will. Because every single lunch time, for a year, I`ve had to wait until they`ve gone and then clean the bloody room myself. In case the little ones get tetanus and I get sued for it.

In my struggle to get children not to be children, however, I have never lost my temper with a kid the way I lost it yesterday lunchtime. The humidity is horrible, the floor of my English room is continuously wet and brown and slippery, and even the boy students are refusing to sit down in case they get their trousers dirty which wreaks havoc with my lesson plans. And yet when I walked in today, this week`s lethargic and resentful student was standing in a brown puddle, slowly wiping the board. The already clean board.

"You have got to be frigging kidding me," I snapped, and took the cloth out of her hand. "Look at the floor!"
The student - at least thirteen years old - looked at the floor with total incomprehension. I could actually see her thinking: floor? what floor?
"Eh?" she said.
"The floor," I snapped even harder, and grabbed two cloths. "You can`t just pretend it`s not there, you know. Every single lunch time you pretend it`s not there. It is there. The floor is there. Not looking at it will not make it go away."
I gave her a cloth, pointed to the floor, and then knelt myself down and started scrubbing. After a few minutes I looked back up. She`d gone to the edge of the room and was vaguely dampening one of the windowsills.
"Oh my God, the floor!" I almost shouted in exasperation. "That is still not a floor!"
She glared at me, squatted down and started dabbing at the corner under the window.

I opened my mouth to shout again, and then gave up. For whatever reason, this student was clearly going to maintain her position on cleaning - namely that it was the details that counted because they were much, much easier to do - if it killed her. And it might, I decided as I scrubbed the whole floor yet again, for the 251st time. It just might.

"It`s too late," Harai said as he walked past and saw me on my hands and knees.
"What`s too late," I hissed at him, totally seething and covered in brown liquid.
"The Prince, Cinderella. He`s married now." And then Harai started laughing.
"Ooh, clever man, well why don`t you just -" and then I stopped. Because cleaning might not be a habit a 13 year old girl will learn, but you can bet that the words I was about to use probably are.

And I was furious up until I got home last night and started tidying my own house.

It`s okay, I thought as I swept around the rug. Why move the rug? How would dirt have got under there anyway? Exactly. And... no, the broom doesn`t fit underneath the fridge, and I can`t be bothered to move the fridge, so why don`t I just... well, you know. Leave it as it is. And the futon doesn`t really need airing today either. Because... well, how many times does a futon actually need airing, anyway? Exactly. I reckon over-airing is worse for it than under airing. It`ll get bugs in it. And as I went round the house, I found myself taking more and more short cuts, and making more and more excuses. To myself, of course, because there was nobody else to make them to, but doing a damn good job of it nonetheless. "There," I said when I had finished, putting the vacuum down and talking to myself again. "Good job, Holly."

And then I realised that it wasn`t a good job at all, and it was much, much worse than pretending to clean because somebody else was making me. I was pretending to clean because I was making me, and I was pretending to myself. And then I remembered a particular afternoon, when I was fifteen, watching my dad laboriously vacuum around a sock.
"Are you going to pick that up?" I had asked him, purely out of curiosity.
Dad looked at the sock as if it had just leapt at him, and then at a point somewhere behind my left ear.
"It`s an awfully long way down," he admitted after a pause, "so I don`t think I will, after all." And then he continued vacuuming around its little smelly socky edges.

The problem is, I think, that the reality of dealing with childhood all over again is that the picture hasn`t changed at all: it just looks like it might have done sometimes. We`re still the same inside, and the candle flips back again just as quickly as the faces flipped out. And maybe - I thought as I dragged my fridge out into the middle of the room in a fury - that`s part of the reason why adults get mad: because we`re not allowed to be kids anymore. And maybe that`s part of the reason adults got mad at us all those years ago: because we were.

Or maybe it`s just because the room was still filthy and when we walked away somebody else still had to clean it.

And pick up the sock.

And so the picture flips back again.

Kimono

A year ago, I bought a beautiful old kimono to replace the wall hanging the ex had bought me, and at the time it represented to me hope in freedom, and in recovery. And it still represents hope, only now I think it is finally hope for the future instead of for the past.

"You know," Kristin said to me on Skype yesterday, "I think it`s time you thought about dating again. At least casually. It`s been a year now since you`ve seen anybody, and it seems such a waste."
"Pff," I snorted all over my keyboard. "A waste of what? Honestly, I`ve thought about it, and maybe when I leave Japan I`ll go on a few dates. But it`s not long before I go travelling, so really it seems a bit pointless: you can`t hold down any kind of relationship when you`re never in the same country, so why start one?"
"At least put yourself back on the market, Hols. Give somebody a shot."
"Dude, do you have any idea how many times I`ve been Back On The Market? I`m not sure the market is going to take me back again. Or if it does, it`s going to cover me in little stickers telling the public what all my faults are so nobody makes the mistake of touching me again."
Kristin laughed. "Frankly, I think you put the stickers on yourself. Maybe you could go wholesale?"
"I`d be lucky to get Recycle Shop. Actually, I think - all things considered - I`m now heading for the bottom of a bargain bin somewhere in the storeroom." Kristin laughed again - because true things are always funny - and then I thought about it for a few seconds. "Actually," I said, "hold there for a second."

And I abruptly ran off, ripped the kimono off my living room wall - where it has hung for the last year - and dragged it to the camera.

"What do you think of this?" I demanded, waving it in front of her.
"Wow, Hol, that`s gorgeous." I held it a bit closer so she could see the yellow silk and the gold autumn leaves. "That`s a really incredible kimono." And then - knowledgeably, because she`s actually Japanese - "I think it`s a wedding kimono, actually. Where did you get it?"
"From the local Recycle Shop," I said, and sat down. "At the bottom of a bargain bin. For two dollars."
"Are you kidding me?"
"No." And then I looked at the beautiful kimono I`ve loved every day for a year. "Do you know how I felt when I found this, Kris? I was so excited and so happy. I got butterflies in my stomach and my hands started shaking, because it was so perfect, and so beautiful, and so exactly what I had been looking for. And I couldn`t believe how lucky I was that some moron had been stupid enough to throw it away, and a whole heap of idiots had been stupid enough to walk past it every single day without picking it up, and another moron was pretty much giving it away. I was literally shaking at my own good fortune that nobody else had seen how beautiful it is and what it is worth. And I immediately stopped shopping because I wasn`t interested in anything else, and I couldn`t let go of it: I clung on to this kimono for dear life in case somebody tried to take it away from me. And then I paid the money and raced out of there before anybody could fight me for it, and I`ve loved it ever since."
"I don`t blame you. It`s amazing."

"But don`t you see, Kris? Even if I am in the Recycle Shop, it doesn`t matter. It doesn`t how far into the bargain bin I slide, or how dark it is, or how long it takes, or how hidden I am, or how many other things are covering me up, or how many times I get given away or handed back: one day somebody is going to feel about me the way I felt about this kimono. They`re not going to believe their luck that somebody stopped wanting me, or that everybody else saw me and walked straight past. They`re not going to believe their luck that they found me and knew what I was worth when nobody else did. And they`re going to be so happy, and so excited, that they`re going to hang on to me for dear life and never let go."
Kristin welled up, because she always wells up: it`s one of the reasons I love her so much. "Oh, Hols. Somebody is going to be so excited to find you. And maybe you`ll feel the same way about them too."
"I will. No matter how many times I have to take them to the laundrette to get the smell out."
Kristin laughed. "Hey - the past always takes a bit of washing, right?"
I thought about it for a few more seconds. "It`s hope, isn`t it? This kimono: it`s hope."
"It`s more than that," Kristin said in a wobbly voice. "It`s a future."

For the second time, my kimono has taught me something. It has reminded me that you don`t have to be brand new to be loved, or hung out at the front of the shop. It has reminded me that it doesn`t matter if I end up in the bin a million times, or covered in a billion little stickers detailing my faults. It has reminded me that it doesn`t matter how far down into the pile I slip, or how many people walk past, or if I get put in the storecupboard behind the shoes filled with mould for the next twenty years. It just matters that one day I`ll be found by somebody who knows straight away that I`m exactly what they were looking for.

And that - when they do - I`ll never be put down again.

Weddings

It's all over. Mum's long cherished ambition of her eldest daughter becoming Princess of England is now officially caput. Kate has married William, and ten years of my mum ending every conversation about my love life with "if you'd just taken that place at St Andrews Uni instead of going to Bristol, Holly" have all come to nothing.

I'm not a particularly big fan of weddings - buying a contract phone brings me out in commitment hives - and yet something made me watch the ceremony live this evening. And that something is Yuki. Who is more of a British royalist than anyone British I've ever met. Despite being 100% Japanese.

"We need to be home by 7" she told me while we were lying on the beach this afternoon. "I have to see the wedding. I need to compare my wedding dress with Kate's wedding dress."
"Your wedding dress?"
"Yes."
I stared at her. "Yuki, you're not even dating anyone."
Yuki stared back at me. "So?"she asked in confusion. "What's that got to do with my wedding dress? It's my dress, isn't it?"

She then spent the entire wedding hour sighing. "I want a dress with lace, now," she told me emphatically (or, as she later emailed me, "race"). "Lace all over. I have to change everything. It's so confusing. I thought I wanted one like Diana." And then she sighed again. "It's so beautiful. Just like a Disney wedding."
"This is a Britney Spears track, you know," I told her as the choir started singing.
"Really?" Yuki leant forwards to listen more carefully. "Wow. Which one?"
"I think it's Hit Me Baby One More Time."
Yuki leant forwards a little bit more. "I can't make it out," she said.
"That's because it's been adapted for Westminster Church," I explained, biting my bottom lip.
"Ah." Yuki nodded knowledgably. "It's beautiful. But I don't want Britney Spears."
"Lady Gaga?" I suggested. "I think they do Westminster versions of that too," and Yuki finally worked out I was winding her up and smacked me.

It was lovely, watching the event through the eyes of someone else. It's true that a little bit of the event seeped into me too, although millions of screaming fans don't exactly epitomise romance to me: it was a little more like a Beatles concert than a sacred and intimate event between two people in the eyes of God. Nevertheless, it was very pretty, it was very British, and they seemed genuinely very happy, so I was pleasantly touched and surprised at myself for being so, although reassured by the cynicism I felt over the blubbing strangers who had camped out for seven days to watch a carriage drive past (I wouldn't camp for seven days to be a part of my own wedding).

Through the eyes of the enraptured Yuki, though, I saw an entirely different event. I saw the climax of a dream: the way life should be. Life as a beautiful Disney movie, where we all meet a Prince, wear lace and live in a castle. And nothing bad ever happens again.

And the fact is: it's what we all need now and then. Not the truth - nobody ever wants the truth - but a version of it that makes reality go away for a little while. And so what if it's covered in lace and we've never met it before? It just makes the dream that much easier to believe in.

Me though? I might always be the little kid at the front of the balcony, with the scowl on her face and her hands over her ears (the kid who made me laugh just at the point where Yuki burst into tears). But it doesn't mean I don't believe in love, or in happy endings. It just means it can be a little overwhelming sometimes.

And maybe that's exactly what this wedding was supposed to remind us. That in a world where horrible things happen all of the time, love is the only thing we all stop for. That we can plough through death and hunger and war and cruelty and broken hearts and recessions and keep moving, but love is still the only thing that will make us all stand still. All over the world. English or Japanese; French or Chinese or Mexican or Russian or Australian; anywhere. Overwhelming, elaborate, glorified, gold coated love.

Or - perhaps more specifically - the little bit in the middle we all know is simple.

The Never List

When I was a teenager, I walked to school every single day with the same girl. We had little in common apart from form teacher and the direction of our houses, but these two factors were enough to tie us into half a decade of tired conversations that both of us enthusiastically forgot a few seconds after they were finished.

All, that is, apart from this one:

"Are you revising for our exams, then?" I asked her, a few months before our GCSEs. She laughed.
"No way! Are you kidding? I just sit and watch telly every night."
"Really? You`re not revising at all?"
"I`m so bad, I know, but I just can`t find the energy after school."
"Me neither," I agreed, and - comforted that it wasn`t just me who was using my maths books as foot rests - went home that night and watched telly with a sense of peace I`d been missing for weeks that had been filled with my mum`s anxious nagging.

I checked in every week or so after that: was she studying yet? No, she consistantly told me. She was not studying. She never studied. And - just to be sure - I checked in with a few of my fellow schoolmates. Were they studying? No, they all told me. They never studied. Who could be bothered to study? Who had nothing better to do than study for stupid exams? And, they implied with a few raised eyebrows, my fierce questions about studying were making me look deeply eager and uncool, and so it was probably a good idea if I stopped so that I didn`t slip even further down the Geek ladder. So I relaxed, and - slightly ashamed that I`d been so worried - also refused to study. We would all fail together, I decided. It might even make me more popular, if I got the same grades as everyone else. Perhaps people would stop writing things about how Geeky I was in the school toilets.

And then came the day of our first exam, and as we walked to school - batting the same inane topics backwards and forwards - out came the revision cards. Hundreds of the buggers. Colour coded, printed, notated, filed in a little plastic box. Worn down by busy little thumbs.
"Eh?" I said, still confused. "Where did they come from?"
"Oh," she said, looking shifty. "I threw them together in about ten minutes."
I looked at the cards - a ruler had been used for all of the straight lines - and immediately suspected she was lying. And then I looked at the dates on them. Four months previous. And I knew.
"You`ve been studying, havn`t you," I said in a flat voice, panic rising up my windpipe. "You`ve been studying for ages."
"Not really," she said, without making eye contact. And then she lifted her chin and looked at me defensively, as if it was somehow my fault for believing her in the first place. "But, you know, Holly, these are our GCSEs. They`re kind of important, after all."

I`m not sure I ever got over the shock. When I said I wasn`t studying, I meant it. My not studying had been part of a greater plan to make me like everybody else. But the fatal flaw I hadn`t foreseen was: everybody else had been lying. When we got to school, everybody had revision cards. I was the only moron who had decided to tell the truth because it hadn`t occurred to me I`d get further ahead by keeping quiet. And the only thing I could do to save myself was hope and pray that I had studied hard enough for the last five years to be able to smudge through on long-term memory instead of short term (I did, but that`s not the moral of the story).

I`d been Nevered, I finally realised, and I didn`t forget it. Throughout life, it turned out, there are always people who will pretend never to do something because it makes them look better, look cooler, look less bothered, and because it fools everybody else into not doing it either and therefore gives them an edge over the competition. Because let`s make no bones about it: everything is a competition. Life and everything in it is a competition: to win, whatever the topic, even if it`s just to stay alive when everybody else is dead. It`s just a question of how seriously you take it, what you`re prepared to do to win, and exactly how you want to play it.

After my first Nevering, the list grew quickly. The Never Studyers continued all the way through Uni - sneaking in ten hours of essay writing time a night and then playing table football in public all day so nobody could ever guess - and then morphed into the Never Really Workers (the I`m on Facebook All Dayers, who absolutely were not). The Never Savers were the next big gang: the people who pretended that they didn`t have four pence to rub together and then bought houses with the 15 grand they`d accidentally saved on the quiet and looked a little bit smug when everyone asked how the hell they managed it. Then there were the Never Eat Vegetablers, who claimed to feast on kebabs and yet stuffed their faces with broccoli when nobody was looking, and the Never Do Exercisers, who pretended they could barely lift themselves off the sofas and yet ran 15k as soon as everybody looked in the opposite direction. There were the Never Drink Enough Waterers - insinuating that the only thing that ever passed their lips was beer and vodka, and secretly rehydrating - and the Oops, Never Use Contraceptioners, who were somehow never the ones who got pregnant. There were the Never Look After My Skiners - with AHAs and RetinAs and a Harry Potter cabinet full of potions and lotions to keep them looking pretty - and the Never Watch Calorieers who somehow stayed 4 stone forever, and the Never Dye My Hairers, whose locks remained gloriously and expensively highlighted.

I was sucked into all of them: partly because I`m stupid, partly because I`m incapable of detecting a lie, or a falsehood, or a smudged truth, and partly because I wanted to. I knew - deep down - that everybody I knew probably wasn`t broke, lazy, full of fried food, smoking and drinking chocolate milkshakes all day (the way they pretended they were), and surfing the internet, but I preferred thinking they might be, because I was. And it took me a very long time to realise that the only not to lose in every single way was to ignore what everyone else was saying and get on with my own plans. Like saving money. And looking after my skin. And eating vegetables. And drinking enough water. All of which I try very hard to do, incidentally, and I`ll happily admit it to anyone who asks, however uncool it makes me. Exercise is the last on the list: and that`s what I`m tackling now. And while I don`t like it much right now (it hurts), I`ve been amazed by the amount of Never Exercisers who have admitted to exercising regularly now that I say I`m trying to.

It will never end, of course: the claims will just start to shift. And they always come out in the end. The Never Wear Sunscreeners? Let`s see just how unwrinkled they are in fifteen years, when everybody who actually wore none looks like handbags. The Never Started a Private Pensioners? I wonder how many will be jetting around the mediteranean when everyone else is dividing their baked beans in half. It`ll be interesting to see just how many of the Never Do Weights group fail to ever get bingo wings, or how many of the Never Eat Non Animal Protein Equivalents have incredibly low cholesterol. As for the Never Do Exercisers: just how many will inexplicably still be able to touch their toes past the age of 50? Quite a few, I reckon.

And hopefully - with a little bit of effort now - I might be one of them.

I just won`t be pretending at any stage that I can`t.

Little Ones

Fear is a strange thing: absolutely none of it is proportional.

I can go through any number of natural disasters, any number of miles, any amount of strange countries and languages and people, any number of muggings and threats and violence, and still nothing scares me quite as much as a little emotional rejection. There may have been a lot of earthquakes during my visit to Tokyo, but it was visiting my little students in Yokohama that set the fear of God into me. And it was with some sense of irony that I trembled at the entrance to a restaurant with cartoon pandas on the walls, knowing I`ve had my wallet taken at knife point and felt nothing. Never in the history of the world has a smiley faced potato croquette been so scary.

I didn`t expect them to remember me. A year`s a long time, even for an adult: for a three year old, it`s a third of their life. I expected tears, hostility, suspicion, shyness: I prepared myself for a lot of Why are you making me play with this strange lady, mum? and Why does she keep trying to hug me? Tell her to leave me alone or I`m going to kick her. I was ready for the most painful of all things: approaching a person you love and having it made clear that they do not feel the same way, except with the eloquence that only a four year old can have. I was ready for rejection in the most open, screaming, loud way possible. And I was frightened.

And so - because I approached the situation behaving like a small, scared child - they responded by doing likewise. When they pretended to ignore me and hid behind their mums, I barely noticed because I was so busy doing the same thing. When they scowled at me, I scowled at them back. When they refused to make eye contact, and stared at the floor, I was too busy staring at the floor to see it. When Shion`s chin started wobbling, so did mine. And when Kou tossed his head and marched off to a distant seat - punishment, for leaving him for so long - I tossed mine and did it too, except I pretended it was because I was putting my handbag in a safe place rather than that I needed to be far away and safe from his rejection.

Three or four minutes later, when the children had established that I was far more immature than they would ever be, they realised that they could never win - that three or four or five years of experience was nothing in comparison to my twenty nine - and buckled. Suddenly, they were pulling at my shorts: "Hollllllyyyyyyy. HoollllllLLLLLYYYYYYY. Loookkkk attttt mmmmmmmeeeeee." They were fighting each other to get on my lap. They were ripping up tissues to present to me, and offering glasses of water until nobody else in the water had anything to drink from. They were showing me their new chopsticks, and their new karate moves. They were asking me if I liked soccer any more now than I used to (the answer? no. And it`s still football). And, with things exactly as they used to be except one year later, I relaxed and started behaving like a small, happy child, instead of a small, defensive child: playing with my food and turning the napkin into a beard and the chopsticks into horns. And - for the record - they can practice as much as they like, but not one of them has a `funny face` yet to rival mine. I know this, because we tested it. They have a lot of work to do, but they`ve got another twenty four years at least to reach my standard of facial flexibility.

They haven`t changed at all. That`s what surprised me the most: in one year, they`ve not changed a jot. They`re a tiny bit bigger - and quite significantly bigger than when I first met them, nearly two years ago - and their hair is longer (and some of them have more teeth), but they`re essentially the same. The same movements, the same ways of making them laugh, the same things that make them cry (having a piece of your smiley pancake stolen, for instance, in Shion`s case). They eat the same: Tensho still pulls his meal apart, and Shinnosuke still works his way methodically around the plate, and Kou still attacks his from the middle, and Shion still defends hers like a small tiger. Some of them have grown up a little (more than I have): Shinnosuke is a little less cripplingly shy, Tensho no longer chews his own feet and Kou has a love for his new little sister that is protective and defensive - just as his love for me has always been - but they`re exactly the same little characters. And when I tickle-attacked them in the ball pit and they defended themselves by throwing balls (very hard: I got bruised) they did it the way they always have done: Shinnosuke, in a fit of giggles, Kou, with a little set chin and spark in his eyes (and the little damp fringe I know so well from when he was a toddler and needed a towel down the back of his t-shirt), Shion with perfect aim and Tensho, permanently hugging my legs.

I had missed them so much, and - honestly - the two hours I spent with them was two of the happiest hours I have ever spent, even if a large proportion of it was spent being ball-pumelled by fifteen toddlers (my kids totalled five: another ten decided to join in the fun of beating to death a big blonde girl). And what was amazing was the realisation - for the first time, really - that people don`t change. That the essence of each of these incredible children was the same as it was two years ago, when I had to sit one year old Tensho in my lap because he fell over when sitting on his own, and the same as it was one year ago, when I left them, and will be the same in years to come. That they`ll get bigger, of course, but Kou will probably always get pink cheeks and a sweaty fringe when he`s over-excited, and Shinnosuke will always work round his food in circles, and Shion will always growl like a fierce little cat if you try and touch her food. They`ll be the same people, but larger and more complicated versions of them. And the big things that scare them now will probably always scare them: just as they scare me, they way they always have. And they`ll love the same things they love now, just as I do too.

When I left them for the second time, I managed not to cry. I`ve promised to see them again - how, I don`t know, but I`ll do it - and the mums and dads have all emailed me since to say that they hope I come back for them. But of my entire time in Japan, my departure from my little ones this time was one of the moments that will stay with me the longest.

"Tell Holly you love her," Kou`s dad told him firmly in English as I said goodbye.
"No," Kou shouted, embarrassed and furious.
"Kou, you won`t see her for a long time again. Tell her you love her."
"No, I don`t," Kou yelled, hiding his head in his dad`s shoulder.
"It`s okay," I said, finally managing to behave like the adult I am. "Kou, it doesn`t matter. I love you."
"No," Kou grumped again, without moving his face. "No love."
And so I patted him on the back, gave the others a cuddle and walked away, fighting the bit inside me so silly and hurting.

I got twenty metres before "Hoooolllllllyyyyyyyyyyyy" started echoing around the packed shopping mall. Every shopper stopped and turned - as I did - to see five little people hurtling along the corridor towards me. "Holllllllllyyyyyyyyyy" Kou was screaming, followed by four smaller "Holllllyyyyyyy"s (Kou is the oldest).
I knelt down on the floor and watched them pushing through the crowds towards me, parents still standing where they had been left.
"Are you coming with me?" I asked them, laughing.
"Hollllllllyyyyyy I love youuuuuuuuu," Kou yelled, and then all of them hurled themselves on top of me.  And when they`d been eventually pulled off by their parents, I got barely another twenty metres before they were all screaming "Hoollllllllyyyyyyy I loooooveveee yyoooooou" and hurtling towards me again. Three or four times, until their mums held on to their little arms and told me to run in the opposite direction or they`d chase me all the way home and I`d never get away. And a hundred shoppers stood, mouths open, staring at the only foreigner in the entire shopping centre, being chased by a herd of tiny, English-screeching Japanese kindergarteners, as if it was the strangest thing they`d ever seen. Which it may well have been.

These little children will always be who they are now: in one form or another. And the knowledge that I have been a small part of that - that I have been a part, in only the tiniest way, of who they are growing into - is one of the best experiences I have ever had. And of my two years spent in Japan, being chased across a shopping mall by a group of tiny children shouting in my own language is one of the highlights.

And that fear: the fear that they would no longer love me? It never had to be there. But it`s okay that it was, because that`s who I have always been too. And it`s who I will always be.

And - as tiresome as it often is - the people who love me probably wouldn`t want me to change either.

Smales Do Japan

I`m back.

Not with a vengeance, because a vengeance is a very silly way to write, but back nonetheless. I`m rested, I`ve been fed on things other than my own burnt offerings, I`ve laughed a lot, and I`ve had my self-induced hermit-status blasted into smithereens. Frankly, it`s amazing what ten solid days of your parents will do. By the end of the visit, I didn`t know whether to hang on to them with my fingernails or boot them out by their bottoms, because my mum and dad are simultaneously the best people I know, and the most frustrating. I`d cleaned my house from top to bottom before they turned up, and they still managed to find ten or eleven things wrong with it and then give me a stern "Holly, you will always be single if you don`t learn how to pick up the post from the doormat when it`s delivered" talk. It turns out that you can be as old as you like, and as independent as you like, and as far away and as much missed as you like, but the first thing your mum will do when she sees you is still wipe her finger along the top of your shelves and announce that you`re a slob (okay, the first thing she will do is cuddle you and cry, and then she`ll hunt for evidence that you can`t survive without her).

It was a fantastic holiday. Dividing the time between Tokyo and Nichinan meant I`d done everything before, obviously, because I`ve lived in both for a long time, but it was a glorious, surreal thing to be able to repeat it all with people I loved. And - strangely - they didn`t respond the same way I did at all. The things I initially found difficult to handle - the crowds of Tokyo, the unknown language, the strange food - were taken entirely in their stride: literally, in the case of my mum, because she got run over on the famous Shibuya crossing, which resulted in my dad losing his temper and kicking the crap out of the poor cyclist`s bike. The food was of interest but only from a distance (in ten days we had two MacDonalds, a TGI Friday, five Starbucks and a billion tuna sandwiches) and the language wasn`t really an issue because I did all the talking. All of it. Every single word, apart from a few pinked cheeked "arigatos" thrown in by mum for good measure. And yet we still had an amazing time. Evidence, perhaps, that I made it rather more difficult for myself than I probably had to the first time round. Which, I think, comes as no surprise to anyone.

My family fell in love with Japan too, I think. Or, if not in love, then definitely in crush. I did everything I could to make them: showed them as much as I could that would make them love it the way I do. And it worked. They loved the excitement of Tokyo, and the incredible natural beauty of Nichinan. They loved Baba, who continued as only Baba can and chatted away to the whole family as if they had any idea of what she was talking about - and shouted at me for a million different reasons, including leaving my washing out again - and they loved Jiji, who set himself up with some ume-shu and grinned at them in silence for half an hour. They loved the amazing customer service, the politeness and sweetness of strangers, the amazing shrines and temples. Dad was made very happy by Mount Fuji, and mum managed five earthquakes a day from 35 stories up with amazing dignity and aplomb. They loved the rice fields, and the sea, and the mountains, and the high rises: we all very much enjoyed our Posh Dinner at the top of the Park Hyatt, aka The Lost In Translation Restaurant, during which we all pretended to be much cooler than we actually are.

And my current school behaved impeccably: namely, the children threw themselves at me with so much love and genuine enthusiasm that even my dad welled up, and my sister announced that she was leaving England so she could teach in Japan and be "loved like that" too. Apparently - according to Tara - I`ve not only passed on my accent to the little ones, but also my unconscious lifelong habit of touching the finger tips of the person I`m talking to: as my sister pointed out, every child approached me with their hands held up, and it was "like watching a hundred miniature Hollys". Which is a terrifying thought, but also an incredibly satisfying one. As my dad pointed out, after a little five year old formally marched up to him with no fear whatsoever and started a conversation about the weather, I`ve "really made a difference". And I`d never felt it quite so strongly as when the people I loved could see it too.

It was just what I needed: my family, being allowed to fall in love with Japan all over again, and not being on my own anymore. Ten days of love, and laughter, and company. It has re-set me: when they left, rather than hiding in my bedroom as I did before they came, I immediately organised drinks with friends, and planned a full weekend. I feel more relaxed, more happy, and more normal than I have in a long time, simply because allowing my family to see my life has made my life feel real, and has made me feel real, and has made everything feel less far away. Because I needed that love and support to reboot me. When I walk down the road now I know that my sister has walked down the same road, and just that knowledge makes it easier to walk down it and not feel so alone.

The irony is: now that my family have seen Japan, they want me to stay. They love it so much they no longer want me to leave, and they understand why I didn`t run away when everyone else did (we were the only foreigners in Tokyo. It was embarrassing, how Fair Weather the gaijins are. Last year it was full of them). They can finally see why I gave Japan two years of my life, even when it took so much out of me. And they can see it, just as I`m getting ready to leave.

I`ve got three months left in the country I love, and will always love. I`ve got three months before I leave Japan behind to start on my next life adventure. But with the new energy, new calmness and new happiness I have now, I think it`s going to be a wonderful three months. And I`m ready to enjoy them totally.

And that`s what a good family does. It strengthens you while they`re with you, and leaves you stronger when they`re gone.

Anticipation

I`m so excited that Harai keeps asking me what`s wrong.

"I`m excited," I tell him every time he asks.
"But why are you singing?" he demands. Or "why are you bouncing up and down in your chair?" or "why do you keep making peep noises like baby bird?"
"Because I`m going to Tokyo tomorrow and I`m seeing the toddlers I taught in Yokohama, and then my family arrive on Sunday morning. And I haven`t seen the children for a year and I haven`t seen my family for eight months. So I`m excited."
"Yes," Harai confirms, still confused, because he knows this. I`ve told him every day for the last two months. "But why are you singing?"
"What`s not to sing about?" I squeak, pulling my hood over my head and dancing.
"Please stop," Harai says, and then goes back to doing whatever it is he`s pretending to do on his little computer just because it`s better than watching me dance.

I`m so excited. I never thought I`d see my little Joyland class again: when I knelt on the floor of the classroom in Yokohama one year ago, covered in kissing three year olds and crying my eyes out, I thought I`d have to imagine them growing older and never be a part of it. That`s the way of teaching, and especially in a foreign language: teachers are replaced too frequently to form real attachments, and ties are never deep. I`ve taught nearly five hundred children over the last eighteen months, and yet only five children have stuck: Kanata and his brick banging, Shion with her Minnie Mouse hood pulled over her eyes, Shinnosuke and his sniffles (hayfever), Tensho and his beloved red fire engine toy, and the inimitable Kou. But, while they`d stuck with me, I never for a minute thought I`d stick with them.

Apparently, I have. When I told their mums I was visiting Tokyo they said the children still ask about me, and have said they want to see me. Every single one of them: the whole gang, plus sisters, brothers, mums, dads, and - possible - grandparents. We`re all going for lunch, and - frankly - I`m terrified, because I`m not sure I believe the kids remember me at all. It took them four weeks to stop screaming with terror every time they looked at me the first time round, and I don`t have four weeks this time. I`m just hoping they can get their inevitable shyness, fear and shrieking out of the way in the space of an hour and a half, so that we can all have a lunch that doesn`t resemble some kind of Hannibal Lecter tea party except from behind their mum`s skirts. Failing that, they`re two, three and four years old: I`ll take a huge amount of presents and aim to buy their love back as quickly as possible. That will probably do it.

And then - even better - I get to see my family. My beautiful, dishevelled, sleepy and grumpy after a 14 hour journey (Tara) and tail wagging (dad) and scared of Tokyo radiation and earthquakes (mum) family. And I can show them exactly what I`ve been doing for 18 months: where I`ve been, what I`ve eaten, what I`ve seen, what I`ve experienced. I can show them the country I have loved so much - and hated with nearly as much passion - and it will all finally be real. And we can all spend ten days doing our best to get mum to eat something other than pizza.

I`ve not been truly excited for a long time, but now? I can`t stay still.

And if that`s not something worth singing about, I don`t know what is.

Fashion

Fashion is subjective.

A large part of that statement goes without saying: of course it is. If it wasn't subjective, it wouldn't be fashion. It would be called telling us what to wear and then making us wear it.

The thing is: I don't think I've really been aware of just how subjective it is until recently. Today, actually. Specifically: 45 minutes ago.

I love fashion. As with everything, I'm divided into two: the part of me that adores fashion, and thinks it's incredibly important as the only art form we become a part of, and can - at a push and with a pinch of luck - be quite stylish, and the part of me that wears a tracksuit, Crocs and a hair scrunchie and thinks nothing of it. Were I ever to become famous I can guarantee that the latter would be what would go in the papers, but - truly - I do love fashion. Or at least I thought I did.

Recently, in what I can only describe as my umpteenth late 20s crisis, I've been deciding that I'm too old: that my heart just isn't in it anymore. In anything, but specifically in fashion. I've lost the will to style. I've been slipping down the slippery slope from casual to chav: from not caring too much if I'm caught in red rubber shoes, to realising I haven't worn anything else in 3 weeks, and that on putting a normal pair of 4 quid pumps I actually said "Oooh, real shoes". Today I wandered to the shops in stripy fleece trousers - fleece on the outside - (too short, too tight, not quite meeting my shoes), obligatory red faux-Crocs, chiffon scrunchie, hair band I bought to use when washing my face, jumper with natto stuck on the front, and didn't even realise I looked like Waynetta slob until I was at home, getting back into my more comfortable clothes. Seriously: these were the less comfortable clothes I had worn shopping. I owned items even more hideous.

In a panic - in a moment of Jesus-Christ-and-I'm-not-even-30-yet horror - I tugged on some normal-ish jeans and scootered as fast as I could to the local clothes shop. And then I scootered to another. And then another. Because all I could find was hideous, lace covered, flower covered, button covered, frill coated, beaded, sequinned monstrosities with bad English written cheekily all over them. Clothes that have clearly been designed for teeny tiny children, and yet somehow accidentally made large enough for adults. And I wandered the clothes aisles, picking them up in confusion, holding them against myself and thinking: this is it. It's all over. I don't understand fashion anymore. I'm out of the loop. Fashion looks more hideous on me than my stripy fleece trousers do.

And then I took myself to Uniqlo, which is completely bereft of all flowers and sequins and frills and lace, looked at the plain black tshirts and grey trousers and thought: oh God. And this stuff makes me look like a teacher. Like a teacher. And I might be a teacher - temporarily, for now, and somewhat reluctantly - but I don't want to goddamn look like one. I used to work in PR, for God's sake. I used to be cool. 

At which point I gave up entirely, went home, lay on my bed and decided that it was all officially over. That my shot at style, and fashion, and looking remotely edgy or attractive - or even like I don't have old food stuck to the front of me - was done. I would just have to fade gracefully into the countryside, count myself lucky that my boobs don't yet touch my navel and hope that when death found me at least my knickers were clean.

And then - as if as a message from the universe - I remembered: the world doesn't end and start with Japan. Maybe, somewhere else - in a far off, distant land - there is a happy medium. Maybe, somewhere many, many miles away, there are clothes that are neither covered in lace and ribbons nor the fashion equivalent of an army uniform. Maybe - just maybe - there are clothes in the world that would make me want to wear them. That would make me want to get out of my tracksuit before the rot set in. And, with that glimmer of hope, I got up and looked on TopShop UK online.

And there they were. Clothes designed for adults, by adults. Clothes I could wear, happily. Better: clothes that I wanted to wear. That, frankly, I was clamouring to get my hands on, just so I could feel human and young and female and cool again. Instead of an old, frumpy countryside teacher which is how I currently feel (and, in fairness, look).

It's all still there: I'd just forgotten there was a world outside. And I've been so long in Japan, I'd forgotten that fashion exists that isn't Japanese. And let me tell you something you've probably already guessed: frilly, flowery, lacy little dresses look adorable on 5 foot 2 Japanese girls with no boobs and swishy black hair, but on a 5 foot ten curvy blonde? Not so good. I look like a cross between a fat giant Barbie and one of the little dolls my aunt puts on top of toilet rolls.

Frankly, if anything has made me realise how much of a shock returning to the West is going to be, it's the last 45 minutes. I'm an English girl who used to work on Carnaby Street - literally where the fashion of the 60s started - and I'd forgotten British fashion existed. Actually forgotten. I'd started believing it was me that was built all wrong, and not that I was in the wrong place for me.

I'm not too old at all, and I'm not dead yet. I'm not too tall, or too fat, or too blonde, or too "masculine" because I look terrible in a ra-ra skirt. I'm not fading anywhere gracefully. But I think it's time for me to start preparing myself to finally come home.

To a place where I can finally be myself again.

Road trip

To be on holiday, sometimes the best thing to do is actually go on holiday.

It seems obvious, but it's not. It's quite easy to spend the time at home, sleeping and burning multiple pieces of toast, but the fact is: unless you go somewhere else, it doesn't actually feel like you're having a break.

I've not been on a road trip with another person since The Boy. We went on multiple beautiful, landscaped mini-breaks, most of which were spent with me either crying or wondering when I would probably cry next. And - let's be frank - it doesn't matter if you're camping at the base of Mount Fuji at sunset: if you're crying while you do it, or on edge just in case you start, some of the magic tends to evaporate from the experience. So I was a little bit reluctant (read: terrified) to go anywhere else with anyone else, whether a romantic partner or not. I didn't want to spend any more time seeing Japan countryside through a quarter inch film of tears or staring out of a car window with my chin wobbling.

I needn't have worried. Yuki had zero interest in making me cry, and apparently - and this was a revelation - I don't actually burst in to tears for no reason at all, so our 36 hours were spent blissfully histrionic-free. In fact, despite the fact that 15 of the 36 hours were spent driving, in the car, with nothing but each other for company, I discovered that I can spend large, undiluted amounts of time with another person without being constantly scared of getting into some kind of fight, or of saying something wrong, or of getting a pain straight through the chest as a result of them saying something even more so. This was also a revelation. I realised I'd avoided being in a small space with another person for over a year because I assumed that one or all of the above would be the outcome.

No: our trip to Beppu - the Onsen capital of Japan, and therefore my Mecca (making this my pilgrimage) - was marred only by Yuki's driving. Some of the most beautiful views I have ever seen - sunlit mountains, herons in flight, large red sunrises over the ocean, winding roads, large lakes and turquoise rivers, fields lined with cherry blossom - were interrupted, frequently, with "Jesus Christ, Yuki, why aren't your hands on the wheel? Either of them?" At which point Yuki would inevitably laugh.
"We're going to have a crazy trip," she would say happily, continuing to check the internet on her multicoloured, flashing phone. The car would wobbly climb another steep mountain to our doom.
"Yes," I would respond, taking her phone from her and putting it back in its fluffy holder (Yuki - and her car - are very female, and very Japanese: everything is lined with fluff, or leopard print, or swinging cartoon characters). "We are going to have a crazy trip. But we are going to have safe driving."
"Crazy trip, safe driving," she would repeat like some kind of mantra, turning around to see if she could find her fluffy box of tissues and letting the car do what it felt like doing in the interim.

According to the Road Law as interpreted by Yuki, you are allowed to stop whenever you want wherever you want: when I said I needed to throw out some of my Oden juice (Japanese stewed vegetables), she promptly slammed her foot on the break and brought the car to an immediate standstill, regardless of the fact that were were on a corner, and there was a lorry behind us. "I meant at some stage," I whimpered when I eventually got my breath back.
"Oh," she said, giggling. "Okay. Shall I carry on driving then?"
"Yes," I said, bowing to the lorry sitting furiously behind us.

According to Yuki's Road Rules, red lights are also not demands: they're suggestions.
"Gomen nasai!" (sorry!) she would shout, accelerating through them, as I held my hands over my eyes. "Well, I don't want to be rude, do I," she told me when I asked who she was apologising to: me, or the lights, or the other drivers. "I'm just apologising to all of you."

According to Yuki's Road Rules, the speed limit is also up for negotiation.
"You follow speed limits in the UK?" she asked me, going 100kmh on a 50kmh road. I think she could tell that I was leaning forwards every three minutes, looking at the speedometer and very quietly and very internally writing my own will.
"Yes. We do. More than this, anyway."
"Ah," she said, laughing again. "For the Japanese, it's more of an idea. We look at the speed limit and then go 30, 40, 50 kmh over."
"And the police don't mind?"
"Not if they don't see," she said, accelerating a little bit faster.

The only time she wasn't a bonkers driver was when we stopped at Takachiho Gorge and hired a row boat to paddle around the famous river at the bottom of it. And this is simply because she couldn't get the boat to move.
"It's impossible," she said after four or five minutes of grunting and waving the oars in the air. "We'll just have to stay here and look at the gorge. Our boat is broken."
"It's not broken," I told her, taking the oars off her and rowing away from the edge. "You're broken."
She gaped at my oars. "Oh my God. You're amazing! You're like a genius rower!"
"I'm not. I just understand that boat oars need to go into the water in order to work." Yuki started clapping. "Yuki," I told her firmly as I paddled away. "If we ever have to escape jail together, you are not allowed to be in charge of transport."

We survived, though. Actually, we did more than survive: we had a great time. We went to the best onsen either of us have ever been to - a natural hot spring in the middle of a pile of rocks, under the stars - we visited the local wild monkeys, and I got so close I could have touched one if it hadn't jumped up and screamed blue murder at me (Yuki nearly started crying), and we ate takoyaki (octopus balls) until both of us had stomach ache. It was lovely. Exactly what a holiday should be.

I feel more refreshed now that I'm home, and more eager to get moving again: I'd forgotten that travelling, and moving, and seeing new things, breathes life into me. I'd forgotten that I'm not a maniac, and can spend large amounts of time with one person without fighting, crying or staring at the horizon without actually being able to see it. And I have a new found respect for Yuki and her car. Both of which, apparently, have the power to make sure I never see anything ever again. Ever. Screw volcanoes and earthquakes and tsunamis and nuclear radiation: my life is in far more immediate danger because of a teeny tiny Japanese girl and her fluff filled, leopard printed car.

I have four months left in Japan, and I'm going to see as much as I can of it in the meantime: go on as many tiny holidays as I squeeze in. Because you know what?

A change is not as good as a rest at all. It's much, much better.

Frogs

My father is having an issue with frogs.

It's not the first time. When I was eleven years old I accidentally told the French section of my family that my dad had a habit of calling them "the froggies" when they weren't in the room, and all hell broke loose. The froggies - namely my female cousins - went berserk, threw roast potatoes, started crying and stomped upstairs, screaming then you are all le roast boeufs; my dad looked sheepish, my sister put her napkin in her mouth so she wouldn't start laughing and I got it in the neck for ruining yet another Christmas dinner.

Now the frogs are causing problems again. Except that this time it's the small, green, hoppy versions, instead of the ones who live on the other side of the English channel.

We have a pond in my garden at home in England. For the first twenty years of living there, it was Pond by name only: consisting of a shallow dip of concrete, filled with rain water. Then my dad got all Home Improvements and had it made into what he calls a Proper Pond, with an embarrassing naked lady made of stone and pivoted - diving - on a metal spike, water spurting between two stones, a pump, plants that regulate oxygen supplies and four fish (one for each of my family). Mum and dad were both irrationally proud of the Proper Pond - regularly rolling the computer over to the window so that I could see it from the Skype webcam - and during my trip home many hours were spent pointing at said Pond, naming and renaming the four fish, and stopping the cat from taking a hungry shine to any of them.

Dad's not quite as proud of the Pond anymore. In fact, he's not proud at all. It has now - in his words - 'turned into a froggie brothel'. And he is not happy about it.

'I know it's spring and everything,' he told me: 'but seriously, Holly. I thought an otter had fallen in and was drowning, there was so much fuss. I went outside to save it and realised it wasn't an otter at all: there was a frog orgy taking place in my brand new Pond.'
I laughed. 'How many frogs are we talking?'
'Tens. Hundreds. I don't know, they're moving too much to count. I don't know where to look, it's totally unsavory. I have to walk to the garden shed with my hand across my eyes, dirty little buggers. I fear for the fish, I really do. I think they're still under there somewhere, permanently traumatised.'
'What are you going to do?'
'I don't know, Holly. Your mum keeps laughing at me. It's not funny. What can I do? I can't kill the frogs, especially not while they're all at it. But it's ridiculous: when they're done with their disgusting habits they're going to have millions of babies, and I can't kill them either. We're in trouble. I think I might have to move house.'
'You know what you are, don't you,' I told him. 'You're the madam of a frog brothel, dad. You're the Frog Pimp.'
'Oh Jesus Christ. I don't want to be the Frog Pimp. If even one of them turns out to be a prince, I'm out of here.'
'Dad, if any of them turn out to be a prince, you're sending them over to meet me straight away.'
Dad sighed. 'Remember when it was just a hole full of rain water?' he said in a tired voice. 'Remember that? There were no frogs at all. That was nice, wasn't it? They were the good old days, when I could walk into my own garden without being corrupted.'

Things have gotten no better. Yesterday morning dad dropped his mobile phone in the pond while in the process of keeping my mum up to date on 'the shenanigans', and by the time he'd made his way through the heaving, thrashing masses to retrieve it again the phone didn't work anymore. And to make matters that little bit worse: mum heard the splash, thought dad had suffered a heart-attack brought on by all the post-watershed action, immediately started crying and rang an ambulance, so dad was forced to explain to a handful of medics that he wasn't, actually, dying, but was simply preoccupied with trying to poke shagging frogs away from his phone with the end of a coat-hanger.

You know, he emailed me this morning, by the time I managed to get the horny little sods away from it my bill was astronomical. I think they must have been making long distance calls to the mangroves or the swamps or wherever it is they come from.
France? I offered tentatively.

Every dad hopes that one day his daughter will find a prince. Only my dad goes as far as collecting frogs for me, just in case.

Judging on current behaviour, however, I'm not sure that any of these froggies are likely candidates.

Whether they're French or not.

Japanese

I`m so incredibly proud of myself.

"I need you to help me, please," I just asked my colleague, Yuko. We`re about to leave on Spring vacation, and I wanted to check that it would be okay for my family to visit the school in April before I left.
"You want me to translate?" she said.
"Please," I begged, and dragged her to the deputy headmaster (a man who I cannot speak to or look at without being reminded of Father Christmas: he is exactly like a younger, shaved, more twinkly Japanese brother).
"Excuse me," I said, and then looked at Yuko, "but my mum, dad and sister are all coming to Japan in two weeks, and I was wondering if it would be okay for them to come into school and have a look round?"
"Of course," the deputy headmaster said. "We`d be delighted. Excellent Japanese, by the way."
And then I looked at Yuko with round eyes.
"I just did that in Japanese, didn`t I," I told her.
"Yup. Fluent Japanese with a great accent. I didn`t open my mouth."
"And he just replied in Japanese, didn`t he."
"Yup. No English in the entire conversation."
"Shit." And then I jumped in the air and gave myself a high five. "I can speak Japanese, Yuko! I rock."

I`m not going to lie: it`s basic Japanese, and my skills are limited to really, really simple sentences. But I managed to say what I needed to say, without a translator, and that`s more than I ever thought I`d be able to do.

Eighteen months, it took me, to construct my own sentences. But was it worth it?

Hell, yes. Because now when my parents come I`ll have something to make them a little bit more proud of me.

Procrastination part 2

It turns out that procrastination isn`t as much fun when there`s nothing to procrastinate from.

Last night I sent an incredibly long, passionate, heartfelt email to The Agent - apologising for pretending I had finished the book seven or eight times when I hadn`t actually finished the book at all and promising that this time I actually had and I wasn`t lying anymore and I was very, very, very sorry for being the Author Who Cried Finished - and she forgave me. The key difference between men and literary agents, apparently, is that when you send agents long, passionate and heartfelt emails, they actually read them.

So I have an agent again, and I`ve sent her the book, and now there`s nothing to do but wait.

Literally nothing.

I`m under strict instructions - from myself, and there`s no stricter instruction - to take a break, because I`m both physically and mentally totally knackered. I know this, because I have the skin of a prepubescent teenager half my age.

But it turns out that taking a break isn`t actually a lot of fun. All the things I squeezed into my days when I should have been writing - the websites I looked at, the books I sneakily dipped into, the tv shows I watched while I "ate dinner" (ie for the hour before and the hour after I had food in my mouth, which is - let`s be honest - most of the time), the friends I emailed, the incredibly long showers I had - have all lost their appeal now that I`m allowed to do them. I have literally hours and hours and hours of time to myself to do exactly what I want, when I want, how I want, and I don`t know what to do with any of them. It turns out the primary element that made procrastination entertaining was precisely the fact that I was supposed to be doing something else.

It`s been three waking hours without a book to write, and I`m already bored stiff. There`s no point in taking a half hour shower when I`ve actually got that half hour to spend taking a shower. The tv shows - now that I don`t feel guilty for watching them - are, as it turns out, incredibly dull: the frission of naughtiness was the only thing making them watchable. The books have transformed into study guides again: now I read them critically, trying to learn how to be a better writer, instead of reading them so I don`t have to be. The websites that were fascinating and from which I could not drag my eyes 24 hours ago are now totally inane. I`ve even found myself watching the underdog X Factor contestants on YouTube - the ones everyone boo when they walk on and then prove everyone wrong by singing Opera - and crying. Because there`s nothing else to do.

It`s pathetic, frankly. I went out for a drink last night to celebrate with my friends, and I spent the whole time yearning to get home to my book, and then remembering it wasn`t there anymore and sulking. I`m the annoying mother who complains about their kid constantly and then pines as soon as it goes away for the weekend. Worse: I have a two week holiday starting on Friday, and not a bloody thing to do with it but lie in bed and watch America`s Next Top Model. I`m dreading it already.

So I`ve found a new way to procrastinate. Half an hour ago, I distracted myself from looking at pictures of tropical islands on Google by writing a draft synopsis of the next novel. Ten minutes ago, I pretended I was looking on a baby site for my recently pregnated friend, when actually what I was doing was looking for names for new characters. And on my scooter this morning, I told myself that it was okay if I came up with a new plot in the processing of driving, because everyone knows that when you`re driving whatever you think about doesn`t count.

I am - in essence - procrastinating from procrastinating by writing another novel: I`m the procrastination version of a recently overrated Leonardo DiCaprio movie. And you know what? It feels good. And I`d imagine it`ll continue to feel good, up to the point where somebody rings me and tells me I need to write another book sharpish.

At which point - and this is just an educated guess - I suspect those islands in the Caribbean and tv shows and long hot showers are suddenly going to seem a whole lot more appealing.

The One

I don't like dating.

I've never liked dating. The thrill, the chase, the excitement, the games: I don't enjoy it. I know a lot of people who do - who get some kind of sick buzz from potential rejection, whether theirs or somebody else's - but it makes me feel nauseous and frightened. I don't like exposing myself, I don't like making myself vulnerable, I don't like asking somebody to like me and I don't like deciding whether or not I like them. And, frankly, the last couple of years of heart carnage have not helped this innate instinct. I'll be honest: if I'm to be in a relationship again, it's going to have to come and bloody get me, because I'm going to be running away in the opposite direction as fast as I can. Love is literally going to have to find me, run me down, pin me to the metaphorical floor kicking and screaming and then spend at least three years sitting on my stomach singing nursery rhymes until I calm down enough to talk to it. I certainly won't be fluttering my eyelashes at it and taking it out for dinner.

For me, therefore, the stakes have been weighed up and thus is my conclusion: love can sod off. My desire to find the perfect man to love and be loved by is significantly less than my fear of the process by which I would do so, and so I have chosen to stay single.

The same, however, cannot be said for finding a literary agent.

While the romantic passions of my heart are easy to ignore, the cerebral passions are not. No fear, however great or paralysing, can stop my desire to write novels and to eventually sell them. Which means that however much I hate it, I have to find a literary agent, even if the process is precisely the same - and every bit as painful - as finding the right boyfriend.

I had one once: a lovely, award winning literary agent. It was a beautiful and promising relationship. She was the first agent I'd ever sent my (extremely incomplete) book to, she rang me within 24 hours of posting it, I went to see her in London, we sat in her office surrounded by best selling novels and talked for hours. There was a meeting of minds; we laughed, I got the pink flush I get all over my neck whenever I'm excited. She told me she hadn't been so excited about a writer in years and I started crying with happiness. It was the kind of date literary dreams are made of.

And then I immediately ran away to Japan, got caught up in the vortex of a soulless man, stopped writing completely, and my lovely literary agent's interest started waning. One month: still incredibly keen. Five months: keen but irritated. One year: less keen, but polite. Eighteen months: one word answers. Two years on, and she doesn't answer my emails, and she doesn't answer my phone calls, and I strongly suspect that she's got an entirely different tone for my number so that she doesn't answer it by accident and get forced into talking to me. And now I've finally finished the goddamn novel - finished it last night - it's too damn late. All I can do is leave a meek little voicemail asking her to call me when she isn't too busy with writers who actually write when they say they're going to write instead of falling in love and running away instead, and then hang up and cry into my pillow.

She won't call, of course, because I blew it. And I've been in the dating game long enough to know a dead duck when I see one.

So now I'm back to the beginning: forced to make an agent fall in love with me all over again. I have to send out manuscripts, I have to wait for them to call me, I have to hope against all hope that they want to see me and that - if they do - they think I'm worth seeing again. I have to check my goddamn email every ten minutes with a sinking feeling in the pitt of my stomach because there's nothing there. And worse, I have to compare them all to the lovely agent who wasn't just objectively one of the best in the business (and who two months ago sold a debut novel for a six figure sum), but who got my novel. Actually got it. Understood the characters, the sense of humour, what I was trying to achieve with it, where exactly in my heart I was writing from. Who gave me advice I worked into the finished mauscript - all of it - and which made it better, and saw all the flaws in my story before I did. Which is rare in any agent, let alone one who actually knows what she's doing.

In essence, I'm going to have to start doing with literary agents exactly what I'll have to start doing with men: looking for one to replace The One. And that is not pleasant at the best of times, let alone when you have to do it twice at the same time.

The difference is, of course, that I've weighed it up and decided that no amount of rejection, no amount of fear, no amount of pain, will ever stop me trying to find the right agent. And if I have to go on a million dates, and check my email a million times, and sit by my unringing phone for a million hours, I'll do it for the sake of my writing. But not for the sake of my heart.

So I may stay single, but unpublished? Not if I can help it.

Let the games begin.

Holiday

I`m taking a holiday.

I`m not okay. There`s no other way to say it: I`m not okay. It`s not about where I am, or what I`m doing: it`s not my job, or my house, or my scooter, or my friends. It has nothing to do with my plans for the future, or where I want to go, or what kind of life I want to build. All of that is fine: great, in fact, because I live in a beautiful place and have a job that allows me to save money in the middle of a recession. It`s me. I`m the problem, and I`m what needs to be fixed.

I`ve told nobody this - not my sister, not my mum, not my best friends - but I`m still having nightmares about The Boy. It has been a year, and I still have nightmares almost every single night: nightmares so vivid that I frequently wake up crying, and so real that they haunt me when I`m awake. And I`ve told nobody because I`m ashamed: because I`m supposed to be over it, and because not being able to heal like I should makes me weird, and strange, and weak. But I can`t stop them: I can forget about him during the day, but when I`m asleep he always comes back. And it`s not even that I miss him anymore: the dreams where I woke up wanting to call him, or wanting to be with him, ended a long time ago. Now, they`re nightmares about how he made me feel. Ugly and talentless. Pointless. Uninteresting. Uninspiring. Crazy. Replaceable. Less than somebody else; than everybody else. Not worth loving, or of being loved. It`s as if the little voice that was inside me for twenty nine years - the little voice that whispered you`re not good enough, and you never will be - was proved, and made real, and dragged outside myself, because I wasn`t good enough for him, no matter how hard I tried, and I was replaced. Because he told me every day, in words or in actions, how unattractive I was, and how annoying, and how stupid, and how forgettable, and showed me - every day -that knowing me more made him love me less. Because he compared me, every day, to somebody better. Because he put me on a pedastal and then clawed me down, every day, until I didn`t know how to get back up again.

And now the little voice inside me has become big, and strong, and it has turned into him: the demons I`ve been fighting all my life have clustered together, and turned into one, real Demon I have to fight every single night in my sleep. Every night I try and I try to make him love me, and I try to feel worth it, and every night he - The Boy, turned into The Demon - tells me how useless I am, and how unloveable, and how unattractive, and makes me fight him over and over again. Until I wake up crying because every single night I lose. And the irony? I fell in love with The Boy in the first place because he was the only person who had ever told me he would fight my demons for me so that I didn`t have to anymore. And he didn`t just become one of them: he became all of them.

I can`t do it anymore. I`m not going `mad`, and I don`t hate Japan at all: I`ve just lost myself completely. The demons - the little ones inside me, and the bigger one that broke my heart - have finally won. A year of a destructive relationship, followed by a year of nightmares that get stronger with time, and I don`t believe in myself anymore: not as a writer, or as a woman, or as a lover, or as a person, or as a friend. I no longer believe that I can do anything, or that I`m worth anything. I`m struggling to write because I`m embarrassed of my own voice: I shy away from social situations, because I`m ashamed of who I am. I don`t look in mirrors, because I hate how I look, and I won`t apply for jobs because I don`t think I can do them. I`m not lonely because there`s nobody around me: I`m lonely because I stay away from everyone who is. I haven`t been on a date in a year: not because I haven`t been asked on any, but because I automatically reject all of them. And I`m scared of life, and of love, and of the world, and of my future: not because I have no choices, but because I don`t have the confidence to make any of them. Because where I used to be fearless, now I`m constantly terrified.

It`s my own fault. I should have realised a year ago that I wasn`t okay: that it was more than just a breakup. That it wasn`t just about moving across the world for and then losing the only man I had ever loved fully, which would have been hard enough in itself: that it was about having every fear and every insecurity I had ever had proved to me as true, and not being strong enough to deal with it. And while I did what I always do - curl back into myself, and cut myself off, and try to handle it all on my own - the only thing that could have fixed it was to let others heal it for me. To surround myself with people who would fight my demons with me: with people who loved me, and adored me, and could prove that none of it was true the way that one person - and his other girlfriend - proved it was. Instead of burying myself in the countryside in a strange place, with strangers, and fighting myself and my demons every night on my own.

I`m so tired; so unbelievably tired. It`s no wonder that life has lost its magic when every single day all of my energy goes on forgetting the nights. I`m not depressed, and it has nothing to do with bipolarity. I`ve simply been defeated.

So I`m taking a holiday. My parents and my sister arrive in Japan in four and a half weeks after eight months without them, and until then I`m not writing and I`m not thinking. I`m going to watch television, and draw pictures, and go for long walks, and ride my bike, and drag myself to parties - parties I`ve been rejecting for months, now - and force myself to have dinner with friends who barely know what I look like anymore. And - most importantly - I`m going to let myself be, until the people arrive with the weapons I need to start fighting again. The people who think that the world wouldn`t spin without me.

And when I`ve started to believe that too, I`ll be back.

To be - once again - somebody`s Write Girl.

Haruka

The highlight of my school days, at the moment, is a little girl called Haruka.

Haruka is twelve years old, and she has Downs Syndrome. I have a much loved aunt with the same condition, so I had a special fondness for this little girl from the beginning and - when I was feeling homesick - found myself seeking her out. They`re similar in that they`re both extremely cheeky, and take immense delight in being as naughty as possible, as often as possible. I went swimming with my aunt a couple of years ago, and - on seeing that I had put my swimming goggles and swimming cap on the side of the pool - she waited until I had swum to the other side, deftly climbed out of the pool, walked over to my belongings and kicked them straight into the deep end, giggling furiously. Haruka, similarly, dragged Harai into the staff room a few days ago, wrapped in yellow tape: she had wound him in it so tightly that the poor man was waddling like a penguin, and had to be cut out of it. Haruka also has a habit of cheating when we`re playing games - she never lets Harai win, for instance, even when he`s winning - and although it`s been a number of years since I played Monopoly with my family, I seem to remember my aunt moving pieces when everybody was looking in another direction.

My attachment to Haruka is more than mutual, luckily: she adores me. She will run - full pelt - down a corridor to see me; her face lights up if I walk past; if she`s in a foul mood and nobody can control her, the staff come and get me because I`m the only person she listens to. Harai and I teach her English, and she will only repeat words if I say them: will use exactly the same tone (I was embarrassed to discover that her incredibly high pitched "hi!" in the mornings was an exact copy of my own). If we play card games, she smacks Harai if he wins, wrestles the card from him and then hands it to me: telling me, very sternly, not to lose again, and then patting me on the head. She makes me little cards, she has assigned me the blonde anime character on her pencil case, has introduced me very formally to her imaginary friend, and she`s constantly petting me: stroking my jumper, brushing my hair out of my eyes, telling me I`m pretty. It is, in short, the most loved I feel in Japan.

I keep waiting for it to disappear, which tells you everything you need to know about my feelings towards love: I keep waiting for her to stop. Every morning, I wait with an anxious stomach for her to see me, shrug, and turn away: for me to no longer be of interest. But she never does. Every single morning, without fail, her face lights up, she throws my own Hi! at me, and then she launches herself at my stomach. And it doesn`t matter how awful my hair is looking, or how terrible my outfit is, or how grumpy I am: Haruka will find something about me that she loves. A random curl, or a scarf, or a pair of tights. The colour of my eyes. And she will throw her arms around my waist, bury her little head in my stomach and give me the biggest hug I get outside of England. And in a country where affection is so limited, and where love is so reserved, Haruka is the person who gives me the warmth I crave so desperately. She`s the only person in the whole country who can change my mood entirely within three seconds.

She came in twenty minutes ago, and - jumping up and down with excitement because she had found me - threw her arms around me and told me I was beautiful. And I very nearly burst into tears. Instead I gave her a cuddle back, and then - because it`s the only way I know of showing affection across the language barrier - I gave her five stickers. Which delighted her so much that she promptly came back five minutes ago and took another three.

For the last year, since my break up, I know I`ve been getting icier and icier: less and less open to love, and affection, and showing anybody I care. But Haruka makes sure that the old me - the warm blooded, loving part - doesn`t die completely. And she reminds me that sometimes love doesn`t go anywhere: that sometimes it`s there every morning, even if you don`t expect it, and even if you don`t deserve it. Even if your stomach is tied in knots, waiting for it to end.

And for that - and for having such a wonderful, affectionate, mischievous spirit, for reminding me of my family and for tying Harai in yellow tape - Haruka is always the best thing about my day.

Castles

"If I don`t write to empty my mind, I go mad." - Lord Byron





I feel far less bonkers today, which is good because I scared my grandad.

I was going to tell you about the antique chair we just bought for the living room, he emailed me half an hour after I posted, but I don`t think I should now. I`m worried it`ll tip you over the edge.

Worse: mum has yet to respond to my tirade against her sugar bowl, but I`m already feeling guilty. I feel I`ve repressed her ability to talk about it - or the matching cream jug - and I`m therefore a horrible and selfish daughter, as well as a mad one. She should be able to talk about any sugar bowl she has as much as she wants without me screaming stop talking about sugar bowls! I don`t care about sugar bowls! into the webcam, and then bursting into tears.

The irony is, of course, that I got out of bed at 2am last night in a fever of tossing and turning and sweating anxiety to write about how crazy I was becoming, and when the confession was made I fell straight into the deepest, calmest sleep I`ve had for weeks. It was a Catch 22: convinced that I was mad I refused to write for fear that the world would know it, and unable to write I got even crazier. And then I realised that in the two years since I started this blog I`ve been in every mental state under the sun, and a little bit of bonkers wasn`t going to bother anybody: or, for that matter, surprise anybody either. So maybe I should try and write my way out of the craziness, because it`s the only way I ever seem to get out of anything.

A reader suggested this morning that the route to happiness (and therefore, by implication, out of craziness) is being at home, surrounded by a constant, supportive circle of friends and loved ones. They`re totally right, of course. I know enough about life to understand that genuine contentment comes from loving and being loved: of feeling settled, and building a solid life around you that doesn`t fall down with one shake. I know from the way I feel when I`m with my family, and with the friends who genuinely adore me (and don`t wrestle on me naked while unconscious), that this is the ultimate goal. And, frankly, in my head, I`ve often compared my life to the metaphorical equivalent of Disneyland: pretty, exciting, but totally empty and devoid of any meaning. It`s like contrasting the Tower of London to Cinderella`s castle: I can create as many turretts and flags and stained glass windows as I like, but it`s not really a palace and there`s nobody living in it so I`m fooling nobody, and even I don`t care much if it burns to the ground. So of course I know that happiness - the kind of happiness that lasts - means leaving my made-up kingdom and starting, very very slowly and with a lot of hard work, to create something real. A world that actually means something, instead of just looking nice on the outside and entertaining for about three minutes.

But it`s not that simple for me. The desire to run away - to flip my life over - is still there when I`m home and loved: my craziness and hunger for the world still reers its ugly head. Sugar bowls scare me, because they`re sugar bowls. Sofas, mortgages, paint for the living room walls: they all terrify me, still. I`m not at the stage yet where I have learnt how to quieten down my fear of staying in one place, or of caring too much, or of promising anything to anyone. And my rented fairytale castle might be fake and lonely and empty, but I can`t build a real one until I`m ready. Until I have all the bricks, and I know what it looks like, and where it is, and who is in it. Until I have the energy and the desire to give myself to it properly. I can`t give up my fake plastic life for a real one until I find the one I`m looking for and know that it`s right.

Plus, let`s be totally honest: my CV is not exactly a shining example of employability, in that it works backwards. I started with responsibility and gradually decreased it to nothing: my return to the UK is going to herald the doll queue and serving drinks for the rest of my life. It`s not a prospect I feel any desire to rush home for.

Essentially, I`ve been waiting my whole life for the point where the balance tips: where staying and building means more to me than the freedom to run, and the desire for genuine happiness outweighs my hunger to see the world and live as I want to. And I`m not there yet: not quite. I`m damn close, though - my Tower of London gets clearer every day, and my desire to start living there increases - which is why my craziness is getting more painful: the internal voice calling me home gets louder and louder, while the voice calling me away fights harder.

But I`m not there yet. And until I`ve seen enough, and collected enough bricks, I know that I can`t start building. There`s a difference, after all, between settling down and just settling, and if I do the latter the castle I build will be no more real than the one I live in now. And it will give me no more happiness.

I know the life I want, and I know where I`m going: every day I know more about the life I`m heading towards. I know that it has a career I love in it, and people I love: a partner I love, a home I love, and children I love to match the family I already adore. And I know that it won`t involve running.

But until the time comes and the balance tips, all I can do is try and make this plastic castle life as pretty and as interesting as I can: as full of as many turretts and stained glass windows and flags as I can get my hands on. Keep moving, and collecting, and living, and understanding, and exploring, and - quite possibly - crying, until I know what my real life will look like.

And - writing - alleviate the madness.