The Point

"I don't understand the point of fiction," somebody said to me recently. They picked up their fork and they said it: as if it meant nothing. As if it was something you could say while you picked up a fork.
"What do you mean, 'you don't understand the point of fiction'?"
"I don't see any reason for it. I mean, it's not even real, is it. It's just made-up stories."
There was a silence while I looked at him and at his fork and at the man I thought I loved.
"What kind of book do you see the point in, then?"
"I don't know. Facts. Autobiographies. Self-help books."
"Self-help books?"
"Yeah. At least there's a point to them, isn't there?"
I opened my mouth and then shut it.
"You don't see the point in fiction writing at all?"
"No."
"None of it?"
"No."
"I... I'm not sure... What do you... I...". And then I stopped. "I'm sorry for that," I said, and put my fork down because I was no longer hungry.

What I wanted to say - what I couldn't say, because he wasn't listening, and would never listen - was: fiction doesn't have a point. It is the point.

We all live - each of us - in our own little worlds: trapped in our own minds, in our own bodies, in our own existences; bubbled into our own thoughts and our own loves; condensed into our own hopes, our own fears, our own daily routines and personalities and obsessions and families. We have but one world each - our own - and from that there is no break, and no holiday. We cannot escape our own stories - cannot escape the story of ourselves that grows as we grow, and follows us as we move - and we are walled up inside it: trapped into the person we are and have been and would be, no matter where we travel or how far we go. Through that we struggle, or we glorify, or we nestle, and within that we make mistakes and we do great things and we hurt and we love and we help and we cherish. And because of this one, solitary world each - a world divided into pieces as small as the people in it - comes all of the greatness in all of the world, and all of the damage. Wars, heartbreak, murder, peace, kindness: all created by the separate worlds of individual people, understanding themselves and themselves only.

Fiction breaks these walls down. Through books - especially through great books - we don't read about other people: we become other people. We see the world through different eyes, in different places, in different situations, with different hopes and dreams and ambitions and fears. Through books we travel, and we empathise: through books we leave ourselves behind, momentarily, and are no longer walled up inside ourselves. And it doesn't matter where we go, or who we become - whether we are suddenly a young wizard, whether we are a starving family in outback America, whether we are a Jewish girl locked in an attic, whether we are a milkmaid on the Devon moors, whether we are a savage caught in a Utopian world three hundred years from now - we are no longer ourselves: we have left ourselves behind, and we have crawled into the deepest parts of other people and seen a new world from inside them. And with these new fears, and new thoughts, and new loves, and new hopes, we learn more than we can ever learn from just looking inside ourselves: we learn compassion, and we learn understanding, and we learn what the world is, and not just what it seems to us. We learn love and hope and pain and horror that are more than our own loves and hopes and pains and horrors. They are love and hope and pain and horror as they stand: multiple and brilliant and different to every single one of us.

If there is one thing in the world that can save the world, it is fiction and the compassion that is entwined in it. There could be no murder if the thoughts and fears of the victim were known: there could be no war if the pain of those warred against were understood. There would be no unnecessary heartbreak if the feelings of others were dealt with gently, and kindly. In escaping from ourselves through literature, we do more than escape ourselves, and we do more than take a much needed break from the suffocating presence of our own thoughts and desires and overwhelming sense of I. We take pieces of other people's worlds, and - in so doing - build another world entirely: a world composed of more than just ourselves. A world as it is, rather than as it is to us.

There is no point to literature if your own world is the only one that matters. But if you can ever hope to help yourself - if you can ever hope to really help more than just yourself - you have to understand others, and you have to see through their eyes, and you have to understand the world as more than just yourself. And there is no more complete way to do that than through literature: through burrowing into the lives of others - whether real or imagined - and living through them.

If there is a point to any of us, it is in being more than just ourselves: it is in seeing the world from more than our own tiny corner of it.

And if there is a point to fiction, it is in enabling us to do just that.

Paris

Paris is the city of love.

I know it, you know it, and the Parisians certainly know it. Coffee pots for two; red wine bottles with two wineglasses; romantic hotels with four poster double beds; chocolates on pillows; trips down the river; Le Louvre and the tiny, disappointing painting that is the Mona Lisa; the lights of Le Champs Elysse; glowing faces in the windows of Chanel and Yves Saint Laurent; heart shaped photos at the top of the Eiffel Tower; bicycles ridden in wiggly couples, laughing exactly as they laugh in Amelie. Love is in every brick, every glass, every window; romance is in every chocolate, every coffee pot, every garlic bulb (strung around the neck of people who say hawhehawhe a lot).

And when a relationship is floundering, Paris is the one city in the world that can save it. It is the one place that can heal a broken heart: can force a couple back together again, and fix the gaps between them. That can give hope to something that has fallen apart; can shine the light of romance back into something that has grown dark and dull; can lift a couple that have fallen into deep levels of miscommunication back into a place of heart and companionship and trust again.

So - with this in mind - I have just booked two tickets in a beautiful boutique hotel: to eat, to drink, to wander, and to gaze lovingly at each other in the sunlight. To put together the pieces of our broken hearts and our broken relationship. Because it is not too late for us. Where there is love, it will never be too late to stop trying.

"Will you stop calling it a romantic weekend?" they asked me yesterday. "Seriously. Stop calling it that or I'm not coming."
"It is a romantic weekend! Me and you, red wine, bread, fake moustaches: what's not romantic about that?"
"It's not even a weekend: we're going on a Monday."
"Okay, romantic non-weekend then."
"But it's not romantic either. I'm your best mate. You haven't got a chance in hell, frankly."
"Pfff. Let the lights of Paris shine into your heart and then say that."
"There's not going to be chocolates on our pillows are there?"
"Don't know, but we get a free boat trip. Very exciting."
"Are you going to make me get a photo with you at the top of the Eiffel Tower?"
"Yep. And then I'm going to put it in a heart shaped frame. Just watch me."
"Did you get separate beds?"
"Does it matter?"
"I'm starting to think it might do."
"Then yes, I got separate beds. But me and you, Grimbott: we're going to have the kind of weekend we haven't had since we were 19 and living on borrowed money."
"We're going to drink too much wine and then vomit and pass out in the beds of strangers again and wake up not knowing where we are?"
"Exactly. Although we have a nice hotel so maybe we should get them to pass out in ours."
"It's not a romantic weekend, though. It's a non-romantic non-weekend. Okay?"
"We'll see. A trip down Le Seine might just swing it for me, I reckon. I'm extremely charming when I'm wearing my fake moustache."
"Pff. You're going to need more than a fake moustache to win me over, Smale."

I've always wanted to go to Paris for a romantic weekend: I've always wanted to prance around playing with shower gels and little chocolates on a white linen bed and take photos with the Eiffel Tower that cunningly play with perspective and make me look really big with the Eiffel Tower in my hand and eat cake until I feel nauseous and then get into a fight about some really old art because we don't agree about what it all means. And I'm sick of waiting for the right man to find me and take me there and have the kind of weekend I want to have: fun, and relaxed, and sweet, and ever so romantic. I'm sick of waiting for the right man full stop. I'm sick of waiting for life to come and get me before I can start living. Because while I'm waiting to start living, my life is wearing itself and me out.

So I'm taking one of my best girl friends instead: a friend I've not seen in a year. To bond together a relationship that has slipped somewhere too dark; to have fun with a relationship that means more to me than any silly boy. A relationship that will always be there for me, and a love that will last whatever else my heart does; that will still stand up in twenty years when I'm divorced and chain smoking 30 cigarettes a day and claiming dole money while wearing tracksuit bottoms covered in toothpaste and baked beans (admittedly it might struggle a little at this point: she's very elegant and works for the government and might not be too impressed with my continual inability to work a washing machine).

Love is worth fighting for and working at: no matter what kind of love it is. And if a ten year friendship isn't worth a Romantic Weekend in Paris, then no relationship is.

Regardless of what you call it.

Crabs

I've got crabs.

Not the type nice girls don't get. The type that walk sideways and have little pinchers and eyes that wiggle backwards and forwards. I've just managed to get rid of the ants, and the cockroaches, and the mosquitos, and the flies, and now I have crabs.

Luckily, they're a bit politer than the last set of monsters.

"Where do you think you're going?" I asked him as I opened the front door and he shuffled sideways towards my welcome mat.
The crab stayed very still, and held his little red claws in front of his face, as if he was trying to hide.
"You want to come in, do you?"
The crab said nothing.
"You're actually quite cute, so I wouldn't mind. But I don't think you'd be happy here."
The crab took one step towards me.
"Honestly, it's not for you. There's not much to do for a crab."
The crab wiggled his eyes and I bent down to get a closer look.
"You're very pretty, though."
He waved one of his pinchers at me.
"I would suggest that you scuttle back over the road and into the sea. I think that's the place for you."
The crab looked at me, and then looked at my welcome mat, and then looked at the house with very few leaves to pick up and carry around or watery ditches to play in or grassy patches to hide in. He did a quick evaluation, and then shuffled two steps away.
"You can come back and visit, though," I told him. "I'd like that. It would be nice to have some company."
The crab waved both of his pinchers merrily, and then - with a quick circulation of his eyeballs - disappeared down a crack in the pavement.
"Bye, then," I said a little sadly. I'd been kind of hoping he'd force me to change my mind.

There are monsters, and there are monsters. And the cute kind that wait to be invited in and leave when you tell them to: they're the kind of monsters I don't mind dealing with.

Monsters with manners.

Wizards and kissing.

Harry Potter and Rounders. The only two English things in existence that Japanese ten to fourteen year olds get excited about. That, and my marital status.

I couldn't have tried harder. I showed them England condensed into picture format: the Queens (Elizabeth 1 and 2) and Prince William (they thought it was David Beckham); Ascot, Wimbledon, Glastonbury, Halloween, Guy Fawkes night; Keira Knightley, Kate Moss, Judi Dench and James Bond; Christianity and Christmas and Easter and churches and pubs; football and cricket and darts and snooker; Take That and Queen and The Beatles and The Rolling Stones and Oasis and Radiohead; David Cameron (I may have called him James Cameron by accident); London and Cambridge and Oxford and Brighton and the Lake District and Devon; an English breakfast and Sunday lunch and bangers n mash and fish n chips and all other British foods with n in the middle; multiculturalism and hinduism and buddhism and curry and pizza and chopsticks. I got England by the throat and I squeezed it into a big fat Yorkshire sausage in a slide format and pushed it down their little throats: all 58 of them. And the only time they sat up straight was when I mentioned the words: Harry Potter. The boy is, truly, magic.

Once I had figured this out, of course, the presentation was easy.

"Where is this?"
Shrugs, nodding heads: general disinterest.
"This is Oxford University. It is one of the oldest Universities in the world."
Glazed looks, slumped shoulders.
"I used to live in Oxford."
Pencils being tapped up and down.
"And - Harry Potter is filmed right here."
"Ehh??" Suddenly sixty children break out into shouts and incredulity; start asking questions, pointing, clapping.

A few minutes later:
"And what about this?"
More shrugs.
"London."
More glazed looks.
"This is where Harry Potter is filmed too. You know the Hogwarts Express? That's Kings Cross station."
Uproar: suddenly every child in the room wants to go to Kings Cross Station.

So I abused it slightly. Bangers n mash? Harry Potter eats it. Radiohead? Daniel Radcliffe is a huge fan (I'm sure he is: that covers pretty much everyone in England). The English public transport system? That's where JK Rowling thought up Harry Potter. Churches? All the basis for Harry Potter. You know where the children meet and Harry's in the invisible cloak? That's a pub. Yup. The actress who plays Hermione went to Glastonbury. And if I could have got Dumbledore playing at Wimbledon, you can bet your arse that I would have done it.

By the time I had struggled through an hour of pointing at pictures and saying "what's this?" and "who's this?" to absolute silence (not one of them recognised even one James Bond), I was ready to push my Powerpoint presentation straight off the table. So I gave them the chance to ask questions, and fifty six hands went up.

"Yes?"
"How old are you?"
"28."
"Do you have a boyfriend?"
"No. I do not. Any questions about England?"
And fifty six hands went down.
"No more questions? How about you?"
"I was going to ask the same question."
"And you?"
"Same."
"You?"
"Me too."
"Right, so no more questions?"
"No."
"Good. Let's go and play a traditional English game of Rounders."

Harry Potter and smacking a ball around a pitch and running from post to post: they love both of them. Possibly because I told them that Daniel Radcliffe played Rounders when he was their age, and if Harry Potter hadn't been a wizard, he'd have been forced to play it at school too. The key to being a good teacher, you see, is in working out exactly what interests children, and then bending the truth to fit it: known in other jobs as lying, and known in education and the media as being creative. JK Rowling can rest in peace at night knowing that an entire nation of children know where England is because of her. And I can rest in peace at night knowing that an entire classroom of children now want to eat bangers n mash and go to Glastonbury for entirely madeup reasons.

I did my best. But to a thirteen year old Japanese child, there is nothing more interesting than a thirteen year old British wizard and whether or not the teacher is getting kissed regularly. England, and her many, many glories, will just have to wait until they're a little older: at which point they will no longer care quite so much about who I am kissing.

And, by which point, I may be able to give them a very slightly more interesting answer.

Endings

Just as all stories need a beginning, so they all need an end.

Eighteen months ago, I fell in love for the first time. I moved 10,000 miles for love, and I had my heart broken. I would be a robot if none of this filtered into my writing (or a much better writer than I am). I have written about it until there is nothing left to write. It has become my story.

There is nothing left to write, now, and there is nothing left to say. The emotions I have lived with and through for nearly two years have gone: for him, although not for me. We spoke for the first time since we broke up in March, and he is happy, he is dating again, he does not love me anymore, and he does not miss me. He told me this as I sat and cried; watched me without a flicker of emotion. And, because this is the first end he has ever really given me - the first end that hasn't finished with love for me and hope for a future together - it is the first end I have believed in. And the first time I have been able to actually let go with my heart, as well as with my head.

All I now need is a hug and quiet and space and my family around me: time to lick my wounds, feel adored and decide what I need to do next so that I can move forwards into a future that does not have him in it. I will not be writing about love again for a very long time: will not be thinking about it again, or feeling it. I do not want it in my head, and I do not want it in my heart. I was too scared to feel it for 28 years - too scared that it would hurt me as it has done - and now I'm putting it back where it came from: away from me. There is nothing left to say, and there is nothing left to feel. I am written out.

My story is no longer a love story: quite possibly never was one. It has been everything, and it has been too much. It has taken too much from me for too long, and given too little.

Just as all stories need a beginning, so they all need an end. This one is finally over. All I can hope is that perhaps, now, a new story can finally start. 

And that it will be a much better story than the last one.

Holidays

School`s out for summer, and - for the first time in a decade - that`s a statement I can actually participate in. And I feel 13 all over again.

I now have five and a half weeks of unbridled free time: time to write and swim and surf and get my arse on a plane back to England and Morocco and Paris for a whirlwind trip, so the unbridled free time isn`t perhaps quite as free as it could be. In fact, considering the fact that I`ve spent the last four months sitting in the staff room, using Google and eating biscuits and staring at my fingernails, there`s a good chance that my unbridled free time is going to be a damn sight busier and more tiring than my bridled work time. Which sounds delightful, and I`m going to thoroughly enjoy wearing myself out so I can come back to work and sleep at my desk in September.

This school, though, certainly knows how to send the students off. I can`t remember much about the last day of term in England, but I`m pretty sure it involved writing on t-shirts, tossing shoes over the hedge and covering the teachers in some kind of gunk. This morning, as I sat in a hall full of 400 dark little heads, all sitting in exactly the same position (on their knees), with their hands neatly in their laps, bowing in perfect timing and in utter silence, I eventually came to the conclusion that my chances of being gunked were slim to none; my chances of being respectfully bowed to 400 times, on the other hand, were pretty much total. There was a traditional Japanese ribbon dance from Hokkaido performed by 20 students - so brilliantly, and with so much energy, that I got little bumps all over my arms - there was a 15 minute performance from the brass band that was without exception one of the best live music events I`ve ever been to, and - to top it off - each of the teachers was re-introduced informally to the hall by the oldest students, and I was declared "the most beautiful and sweet teacher," which meant that I immediately screwed up my lines, went red, bowed five or six times and burst into tears.

I`m very lucky: as much as I am looking forward to being able to see my friends and family and write the damn book (and it will be written: I am focusing on that now as a priority), I am also part of a school that I`m not at all sad to be returning to in September. A school with warmth, humour, intelligence and - just as importantly - very, very good taste in female attractiveness. Which is all a teacher can ever really hope for. That and presents. I have high hopes for my birthday in December.

I`m not 13 anymore, but it feels like I am. School is out, and the holidays - in all of their teenage, summer glory - begin now.

And I couldn`t be happier about it.

A modern education

When I was at school, I learnt many things. I learnt how to calculate the volume of a triangle using the lengths of its sides; I learnt what happened on Bloody Sunday in Russia; I learnt how to do long division by hand; I learnt how to make dove-tail joints, how to stand in the cold and get shouted at by the netball teacher, how to make speeches about Hinduism and how to draw bowls of fruit surrounded by candlesticks and artfully draped bits of silk. I also learnt - and this wasn't necessarily on the curriculum - how to make myself invisible, how to hide in the changing rooms during lunchtime and how to pretend that I couldn't hear a single word about me that anybody was saying.

The last set of skills have been useful - although finding changing rooms to hide in is more difficult as a teacher, and I often have to resort to the staff toilets - but the first set have not. Not once in my entire life have I ever used the wonders of trigonometry, despite being forced to study it week in and week out for five years. I have never needed to know how to draw a map that shows various geographic complexities, and I have never needed to divide seven figure numbers by five figure numbers in my head. There is no maths, in fact, that I need anymore that can't be done with my fingers or my mobile phone.

What they didn't think to teach me, however, in all of my GCSEs, in all of my A Levels, in my entire BA and an entire MA was: how to pump a bike tyre.

This piece of knowledge was lost, somewhere: presumably tucked away in the same place as how to unblock a shower or what gets rid of mould or how to check the oil in your car. Perhaps the teachers themselves didn't know either: perhaps their teachers didn't show them, and - like me - they're living in a muddled, confusing world of things they don't understand and can't admit to anyone for fear of admitting they don't actually know anything worth passing on.

One hour and fortyfive minutes. One hour fortyfive minutes, sitting on the kerb outside my house, fiddling with tiny little bolts and nuts (and - let's be honest - I don't actually know which one is a nut and which one is a bolt). One hour fortyfive minutes, talking to my bike.

"Why has this got a pointy stick coming out of it?"
Silence.
"Well, where on you is a hole that would fit a pointy stick?"
Silence.
"If I jab it in to the wheel, is that going to make matters worse?"
Silence.
"Is it a good idea to take this off?"
Bike lets out loud wheezing noise, as remaining air escapes.
"Okay, I guess not. What about if I just screw everything together, and then pump as hard as I can?"
Silence, punctuated by the sound of air coming out of the pump, and then - after I had squeezed the tyre and realised that there was absolutely nothing inside it - the sound of lots of swearing.

I'm considering buying a new bike; just wheeling this one into the river and getting another one. One with air in its tyres. This one lasted four weeks before the air came out: I could average out at another 12 bikes before I leave Japan, and never have to touch another bike pump again.

In the interests of economics, however, I've just had to make yet another embarrassing cry for help.

The Babacycle, I emailed as far and wide as I could, has two flat wheels and I don't know how to get air back in them. Can somebody come and save it from the river for me?
How are you still alive? a friend emailed back. Seriously. How have you got to 28 and are still alive? I'll be over later.

9 GCSEs, 3 A levels, a BA and an MA, and I know absolutely nothing of any use to anybody at all: least of all to me. Nothing at all. All I am is a silly girl with a blocked, mouldy shower and no oil in her car who can't pump up her own bloody bike tyres. I would have been better off staying at home throughout my teens, reading How To guides on the internet and working out how to hang my laundry so that it doesn't get peg marks in it or fall on the floor. Which is exactly what I'm going to be doing for the rest of this evening.

School, apparently, is very useful in teaching us the things that life will never bother asking from us: like revising as hard as you can for an exam and then finding out when you get in there that the pages that fell into the bathtub were the ones you needed to read. And I have the rest of my life to find out just how much else I missed while I was learning the periodic table by heart and sanding down the edges of a plastic clock I made that looked like a hummingbird but didn't actually work.

And - now that I am a teacher, even if temporarily - I can enjoy passing on yet more useless information that none of my students will ever actually use. And then I can also enjoy laughing at them in twenty years when they're all riding around on flat-wheeled bikes, smelling slightly.

Thank God for a thoroughly modern education.

Kristin

Into our lives, now and then, come people who change us. For the dozens - hundreds, perhaps thousands -of people we meet, only a few of them leave an impression that lasts long after they have gone, and alter the shape of our lives.

I have met two of those people in Japan. One is the boy I love who broke my heart. And one is the girl I love who helped put it back together again.

"Mmm," she said half way through our first phone conversation, four months ago. It was all she had said for five minutes, and I was already convinced that - despite having met me only once - she hated me with a passion usually reserved for people who have met me lots of times.
"So what time are we meeting?"
"Uhuh."
"What time?"
"Mmahem."
"Is 7.30 okay?"
"Mmm?"
"Er, okay...Great I`ll see you there."
"Uh - erm - uhuh."

"Holly," she eventually admitted, ten days later: ten days of wrong times and wrong places and phone conversations I had started avoiding. "I need to tell you something."
"You hate me, don`t you."
"Nope. I can`t understand you, especially on the phone. Not a word. You`re harder to understand than the Irish."
"You`re kidding me. I`m harder to understand than the Irish? Is that possible? I mean, I know you`re from LA, but surely you`ve heard some accents other than American before? I`ve got a perfectly normal English accent, you know."
"Hmmm? What? No, you lost me again."

Since then, we have walked together, onsened together, eaten together, driven together: all the while, talking and sifting the world into piles. And she has been all I could hope for from a friend: she has brought me ice cream when I`m sick, she has cuddled me when I`m crying, she has cooked me dinner when I`m hungry. She has calmed me down and bolstered me up: been there, even when I asked her not to be. The few words I`ve managed to communicate in the right language have been listened to carefully, attentively and thoughtfully: with consideration, with wisdom, and with infinite patience. What`s more, she has shown a level of compassion I have rarely seen in anyone: cried when I cried, was happy when I was happy, was angry for me when I needed her to be and defensive of me when I didn`t expect it. In the process of picking up the pieces of my heart, one by one, and trying to fit them into a shape that makes sense to me again, she has been pivotal: never impatient, never cruel, never frustrated, and always with a unique perspective that comes from being thoroughly good, and thoroughly kind. From having infinite belief in people, and in love, and in hope, and in trust, that has risen above her own past and own terribly broken heart and made her one of the best, most loving, most genuine people I have ever met. A person who will stand by a friend who she has only ever seen in pieces - only met in pieces, and who had nothing much left to offer anybody - and patiently help to build her into something whole again.

"Smaley," she said last night, as she dipped her tempura into my sauce. "You are going to be so loved, one day."
"Do you honestly think so?"
"No, I know so. How could you not be loved? You are so good. You have such a good heart, Hols. Even when you`re hurting and in pain you`re good and kind and brave and honest. One day somebody is going to see that and love you so incredibly much for it, and they won`t stop or change their minds. Not ever."
"Really?" I asked her, tears springing up immediately (I`ve seen little evidence to hope for this so far). "Do you really think that?"
And then - as I started blinking as fast as I could - she promptly burst into tears.
"And," she said, "it hurts me so much that you can`t see it."

In showing me such kindness and compassion, she has made me want to be better; in seeing in me so much goodness, she has made me start seeing it too. In reminding me what loyalty and thoughtfulness and selflessness can be like, she has made me start seeing the world as a beautiful place again: in understanding my pain, and in loving me in spite of the lesser person it has made me, she has made it easier to bear and to try and hold myself straighter.

In two days, Kristin leaves Nichinan and I am on my own again. But - as much as I am going to miss her, and as lonely as I`m sure I am going to be with her gone - she is leaving me a different person to the girl she met on the doorstep, four months ago. I am still hurting, and I am still broken, but she is leaving me with more hope, and more faith, and the knowledge that there is nothing in this world more important than kindness, compassion and the dignity and grace that come with them. Because, when our hearts break and our minds stumble, it is kindness and compassion that will lift us back up: in others, and inside ourselves. It is the people who love us that will put us back together again, and - in loving us so much - teach us how to love ourselves again. And it is the people who stand by us, and pick us up when we don`t have the strength to do it ourselves - who listen to us, and cry with us, and fight for us - who make our hearts whole again and give us something to aim towards.

I don`t know when I`ll see her again, but I know that when I do I will be a stronger person and I will be a better person because of her. And - because I don`t know how to tell Kristin that in words that she will understand - I have written it down.

So that she can read how much I love her instead.

Betty

I think I have to sell Betty. My surfboard. Not my grandma.

"Betty," I said this morning, struggling back into my wet bikini and rash guard. "It's time. We're going surfing."

"Really?" she said, looking down from the wall where she's been propped for the last six weeks.

"Seriously. I'm feeling pretty genki this morning."

"You're not just winding me up?" Betty asked me, looking suspicious.

"Nope. It's just me and you and probably a whole lot of rain but I'm game if you are."

"Oh God, anything to get me out of your study," she whimpered, convinced - as she has been for some time now - that she belongs to a category of my possessions that includes dumb-bells, an iron, a yoga mat and fake eyelashes: good ideas at the time, but currently rotting in various cupboards all over the house.

And I was feeling pretty genki. I've spent the long holiday weekend at the beach, learning how to ride a motorbike (sorry, mum), learning how to sit behind a crazy Japanese boy on a motorbike travelling at 80mph on wet sand screaming aaaarrrggghhhh stop Shin, stop, for the love of God, stop, you total bastard, or when I get off this thing I'm going to sodding kill you, do you hear me? and discovering that not only can I bodysurf properly and thoroughly enjoy it: I'm actually good at it. Which is a fantastic thing to find out, because I can count the amount of physical things I'm naturally good at one one hand (and no, I'm not telling you what they all are). 

So, tired and red and full of beans and the conviction that I'm probably immortal, I got up early this morning and decided that Betty was coming out of early retirement. 

It started relatively well. We walked down to the beach and I nodded to a few handsome surf boys - that Yeah, we're cool aren't we surfer look combined with a big dose of and - double take - yes, we are different races - and Betty did her utmost not to trip me up or tip me over, which is the most you can really expect from a 7.5 foot surfboard. We both made it into the sea in one piece, Betty grumbling that it looked like rain, and then stood in the shallows and assessed the situation for a few minutes.

"They're quite big, aren't they," Betty said eventually.

"Don't be such a wuss," I told her crossly. "I'm a strong swimmer and you're basically a raft. We'll be fine."

"I'm not sure about this," she moaned in a low voice. "All the other surfers are over that way."

"Yes, well, thanks to the fact that you're twice the size, weight and volume of all the others - and covered in pink flowers - I've decided to take us somewhere a little bit more private. It's hard to look cool with you tied to my ankle."

"Are you saying I'm fat?"

"You're huge and you know it."

Betty sniffed.

"I'm in perfect proportion," she told me in a huffy little voice. "And you're not exactly diddly yourself either, you know."

"I'm in perfect proportion too," I snapped back. "Now pipe down and focus on catching waves, please."

Except that it was really, really hard. Betty is such an absolute beast - twice the size of a normal surfboard, twice the weight - that everytime I tried to do anything she resisted. When I tried to duck her under the waves, all of my weight wouldn't make her go down; when she slipped away from me she dragged me with her by my foot rather than the leash serving to keep her with me. If I needed to turn her around quickly she did it in her own sweet time, and when I tried to get her back out of the water for a rest I didn't have the strength in my arms to pick her up. True, there was no chance of sinking on her - she's like a small boat - and true, I can get up on my knees quite easily because there's a six inch gap between me and the water, but it didn't make up for an hour of arguing, negotiating and bitching at each other. ("Right, turn, turn, turn and go. Turn, Betty. Turn. Oh for the love of.. Nope, we missed it." "I didn't feel like turning." "I didn't ask you if you felt like turning, I told you to turn." "Well I fancied the wave behind it." "I wasn't ready for that one!" "Well I was.")

As bad as the arguments were, however - as much as we sniped at each other and wrestled together in the rain (she was right: it had looked like rain) - none of them, I think, necessitated her trying to kill me.

It was a good wave; Betty and I were coordinated, we were both sailing quite nicely towards the shore, I was up on one knee, Betty had piped down. She slowed down too soon, as she would (she's too fat to go very fast), and I lost my balance, went under the waves and popped up with Betty, dragging me in one particular direction and testing my immortality theory a little too fervently.

"Betty!" I shouted. "I'm five feet away from the rocks! What are you playing at?"

"You brought me here. I told you the other surfers were the other way."

"No, I brought you there. 50 metres that way. Where my bag is, you see? We are now up against the rocks. You nearly smashed my head open."

"Don't blame me."

"Right - fine. I'm not arguing about this. Move away from the rocks."

"No."

"Move away from the rocks."

"No."
"Betty, move away from the frigging rocks." 

I started dragging her away from them, but Betty had decided to play dead and all of my weight and strength couldn't get her to move the right way.

"Betty, you're going to kill me!"

"No, you and your crap surfing skills are going to kill you."

"My inability to move you is going to kill me, Betty! Now move."

And we struggled, shouting at each other, back to the shore where I finally heaved Betty onto the sand and collapsed in a heap on top of her, still shouting at her.

"This isn't working," I told her when I got my breath back. "It's just not. Is it."
Betty shrugged.
"The guy who bought me was 6 foot 5 and built like a brick shithouse. You're a bit puny."
"And you're too fat."
"I know. Stop reminding me."

So - after a few tears and a lot of apologising from both of us - we've decided to go separate ways. I love surfing, and I love Betty despite her flaws, but she is too big for me, too strong for me, and too argumentative for me. The chances of ever standing up on a smaller board are much lower, but the chances of being killed in the process are lower too. Plus I won't spend my entire time out on the water shouting and struggling and arguing. And - frankly - I've done quite enough of that this year. Surfing is supposed to be my escape from all that: not just another source of drama.

She'll will be fine. I'll find a nice, big, strong man to look after her: a man who secretly likes being controlled and shouted at and nearly being killed (and there are more of them than you might think). And I'll find something a little more placid, and a little more malleable. Something I can have more fun with, and a few less fights.

Betty was useful, but it's time to sell her up, now.

My surfboard. Not my grandma.

Babacycle.

When acquiring a nickname, there are a few basic requirements.

The first is that it subtly, and yet poignantly, points towards one or more of the qualities you want made public knowledge: if you are good in bed, you want this known; if you are prone to breaking hearts, you want the opposite sex to be aware of it; if you are unfairly elegant, beautiful, intelligent or witty, it should be known as widely as possible. The second is that it creates an identity with which you will be forever associated: one that condenses the essence of who you are into an identifiable, pinpointable form and allows it to be recognised by others. The third is that it's not one you're embarrassed to have shouted at you in a supermarket.

After much consideration, I have decided that 'baba' (grandma) ticks absolutely none of these boxes.

The first strike was when I searched in my handbag and offered my friend a sweet.
"Where the hell did that come from?" she said, looking at it as if it might start moving.
"My bag," I told her, rather obviously.
"Where in your bag?"
"Oh, I don't know," I said. "Somewhere in there. Don't worry, it doesn't have fluff on it. I checked."
And then I dropped my bag and coins rolled out on the floor.
"You," she said as she bent down to help me pick them up, "are such an old lady."
"Hey - these sweets are thoroughly modern sweets," I responded indignantly.

The second strike was when we turned up at the onsen, and out of the boot of my car I produced a little pink basket filled with a sponge and a back scrubber and a toenail scrub and a little hair towel and a little bottle of moisturiser and a little rolley thing to roll on your face and make you look younger.
"Tell me you don't have an onsen basket in the boot of your car," she said.
"You can see I do."
"You realise that's a little old lady basket, right?"
"No it isn't. It's a perfectly logical way to carry everything around."
"But why do you need all of that stuff?"
"Well I need all these things to get clean properly, don't I."
My friend looked at me, and then - after a long silence - she shook her head and said:
"Old lady Smaley."

The third strike was spread far and wide when I turned up to a beach party with my bike.
"What the bloody hell are you riding?" about six people yelled at me.
"My bike," I told them. "Cool, isn't it? Look, I personalised it."
"Why does it have a large green plastic basket tied to the back with shoelaces?"
"So I can carry my shopping, obviously."
"Haha - it's BaBa and her BaBacycle."
"You won't be laughing," I told them with my nose in the air, "when I can carry far more beer than any of you."
But, as it turned out, they were; because it was me that had to carry all of it, while they raced ahead with their ten speed numbers and I huffed and puffed behind them on my own with just my little bell to keep me occupied.

The fourth and final strike was today, when I turned up for a beach picnic. Due to a little absent mindedness - and due to being a little bit preoccupied with The Mill On The Floss - I accidentally sat on the beach yesterday in a t-shirt and shorts and burnt the buggery out of my arms, neck and face: proving - if there was any doubt - that English people abroad are exactly what the stereotype of them is. Which means that today I took a few precautions to make sure I didn't do it again.
"Baba, what are you wearing?"
"I'm protecting myself from the sun."
"We can see that. You're wearing arm mufflers on a beach."
"Do you like them? I got them for 100 yen. And look at my hat! It has a little bow on it."
"Uhuh. And you're wearing a scarf. In July."
"To protect my neck."
"Oh Baba," one of my friends laughed. "You really are the cutest."
"I'm not cute," I said, sticking my nose even further in the air. "I am emminently sensible, and when you're all burnt I shall be laughing at you all and waving my arm mufflers in your faces."

I didn't get to wave anything, unfortunately; the sun managed to find my nose anyway, and while my friends all got golden glows, I got a bright red centre of face.

My nickname, thus, is set, although luckily not for long: these friends all leave Nichinan at the end of the week, and I get to start all over again.

With the next set of friends, I am going to be cultivating an entirely different nickname. I'm not sure what it will be yet, but it won't have anything to do with little old ladies.

And I think my bike might need a new makeover.