Am I an ex?

Well, it’s been five months since I last smoked a cigarette. Do I miss it? Yes, sometimes. Some days, quite a lot. But the key is I am not getting in the car, driving to the village and buying a pack of Camels. Not yet. Hopefully never, but you should never say never, should you?

Is it time to change my tagline? For now at least, I am not “writer, thinker, smoker, drinker”, am I? And it has such a nice rhythm, doesn’t it? Oh, well.

I am stumped by that tagline. Because there’s another, very major “ex” that should be considered.

Five months.

One of those months was spent in France. I had planned to start every day writing something about the previous day. Mon journal français. If you are a blog follower, you know that didn’t pan out. Yes, there were posts, a number of them, but certainly not the daily ones for which I was hoping. I was kinda counting on those French mornings – a coffee, a computer and me – to help me get over a big hump.

I don’t seem to be able to write without smoking. Go figure. Half a century, first with a typewriter, then with a computer, almost always with an ashtray. Why would a change in that matter? Ha, bloody ha.

There is a local writers’ group on the island, as I’ve only recently discovered. One of the members started a new thing – Shut Up & Write. Every Wednesday morning at the library from 10am until noon. This is my third time here. The first two times it was a case of just bloody write something, blah, blah, blah. Anything. Just string some bloody sentences together. Stream of consciousness just bloody fine. And I did it. Twice. I chose not turn either of my previous efforts into posts. Not sure this one will be a post either, but it might.

I’ve got a half-written play called The Challenge that’s been kicking around for a while now. Brief pause while I check. Yes, 15 good pages. Good characters, clever writing. A clear idea of how I wanted it to end, but, after 15 pages, no idea how to get to where I wanted it to end. So it’s been sitting here on the computer for two and a half years, abandoned in favour of finishing The Waiting Room, which I started writing quite a while before The Challenge and saw produced to good reviews last year.

I’d kinda like to get back to The Challenge. I’d kinda like to get back to one of the half dozen novel starts that have been sitting on my computer, some for as long as 20 years (and three computers) ago.

Quick time check. I’ve been writing for 30 minutes. Only an hour and a half to go. Jesus.

I had a drink with a mate yesterday. Told him about my problem, the challenge, as it were, trying to figure out how I can ever get myself writing again with my constant writing companion. He told me he knew an artist who’d been a two-pack-a-day smoker for decades, before deciding, for the sake of his health, to stop smoking. And, oh, dear, suddenly he could not paint. Smoking was such an integral part of his process (paint a bit, stand back, have a cigarette, consider what’s now on the canvas and what should come next, finish cigarette, go back to painting) that he simply could not proceed. Happily, he overcame this – eventually. It did take a while. Perhaps the smoker’s block for which it seems I’ve traded my smoker’s cough will eventually go away. God, I hope so.

Because, honestly, what the hell kind of tagline is “ex-writer, thinker, ex-smoker, drinker”? A fucking stupid tagline, that’s what kind.

Gah. Is it really only nine minutes since I last checked the time? An hour and twenty minutes to go.

So, what’s happened since France?

Well, I guess I better go back a bit further to what happened before we left France, because, of course, we did have a conversation about what comes next.

What happened in France (and briefly Spain) was this (amongst other things): I confirmed what I think I already knew, that falling asleep and waking up in this man’s arms is the greatest thing ever, that I wanted to do this every night and every morning for so long as we both shall live. And he felt the same.

Bit impractical, what with living in different homes with different pets (the marvellous Miss Maisie with me and Ember, the semi demented Afghan hound with him).

The obvious thing, we agreed during that still-in-France conversation, would be for both of us to sell our homes and buy somewhere else together that would be ours and ours alone, free of ghosts. Obvious, perhaps, but not really practical. He blows glass. His studio is there beside his house. His house is on the waterfront and has the most beautiful view. I could not ask him to give up either of those things. (And, hey, I’ve got nothing against living with a beautiful view.) But, yes, let’s do be practical.

How could this possibly work? His walls are already covered with art. (I told him a long time ago that his house was like an art gallery. He said that’s what he’d always wanted.) My walls (that aren’t covered by bookcases – another story) are also covered with art for which there is no room at his house. He’s said that, when the time comes, he will take every single painting down and we will start again. Well, that could work.

Nonetheless, if I am going to move into that house, which it seems I am indeed planning to do, I have to have one room that is entirely mine. I told him that in France. He totally understood and agreed. The idea became to clear out his study (sadly on the wrong side of the house for the water view – oh, well) so I could make it mine. Easier said than done when the entire house is completely chock-a-block.

There is a storeroom. Much of the contents of the study could go in the storeroom. With its sloped ceilings, it’s a far from ideal study for a tall guy, but could be made to work – if it was actually possible to get into the storeroom, which, when I first opened to door to look inside, was not possible.  

As I am sure would have eventually happened if Mike and I had had the luxury of a storeroom, over the years it would have filled up to the point of inaccessibility, reducing us to simply opening the door and throwing things in to get them out of the way. And that is exactly what happened to this storeroom. So, weekends have been spent, clearing it out. We’ve almost made it to the desk he once upon a time did use in there. Lots more to do, but a start has definitely been made.

Oh, hurrah, it’s 11:07. Only 53 minutes left. I can do it. I’m sure I can do it.

Okay, so what about the pet problem?

Ember is an overly excitable three-year-old Afghan. Every time she yawns, all I see is the huge jaw that could easily snap Maisie’s neck. Obviously, that is not an acceptable scenario. Somehow, we have got to get these two animals acquainted.

Maisie is a love. She really is. I can easily imagine her one day curled up on the sofa beside Ember. At the moment I am having a hard time imagining Ember happily curled up with Maisie, but you never know.

For the past few weekends, I have been taking Maisie over this his place. She really wasn’t happy the first time, not least because she is a cat who is normally free to roam her wooded domain. Suddenly she was locked up in a bedroom with a litter box in the en suite bathroom. I had the foresight to take her blankie with me and spread this over a cushion on the trunk at the end of the bed. She liked that. She liked being able to sleep with (and on) us at night. She did not like being cooped up upstairs when we were not there.

On the second day of the first weekend, when Ember was safely outside, I left the bedroom door open so Maisie could further explore. She did come out and tentatively made her way downstairs. First job was checking for escape routes and hiding places. Ah, ha. Yes, she could indeed fit between the back of the sofa and the wall. Oh, and what’s this, tucked in the back, out of the way, in the glorified closet that is the “music room” with stereo and CDs? Yes indeed, there is small hole in the wall that leads to a bit of a crawl space. Okay, she still didn’t know what the hell was going on, but she was finding her way around and deciding, okay, this might not be too bad. Then, from the garden, Ember spotted Maisie inside and went completely mental, hurling herself at the window and howling at top volume. Maisie did a very impressive leap over the baby gate at the bottom of the stairs, shot back up into the bedroom and didn’t come out from under the bed for hours. (Cat treats in a bowl under the bed.)

And now, the baby gate, which had simply been annoying Ember, was making her crazy. There was a cat in the house and it was her mission to track this interloper down. To kill the interloper? To make the interloper’s acquaintance? The end goal was not entirely clear and I wasn’t taking any chances.

Ember has not been allowed into the bedroom at night for a long time – not least because, at nine feet stretched to her fullest, she takes up too much space on the bed. She’s not happy about this, but generally she accepts it as her lot in life. At least in the morning she is allowed in for some time on the bed. Obviously, not with Maisie there. And so Ember whines and barks and whines some more. At first just in the mornings, now sometimes all night long. I feel for her, I do, but there is no way that big jaw of hers is getting anywhere near Maisie.

Twenty-eight minutes to go. Cool.

The second weekend, when Ember had been taken out for a long walk, I left the bedroom door open again and again Maisie came out to explore. What were the first things she checked? Whether she could still squeeze in behind the sofa and whether that crawl space option was still available in the music closet. A text warning of Ember’s imminent return. I got Maisie back upstairs. As soon as Ember came in, she knew the cat had been downstairs – stuck her nose as far as it would go under the sofa, had a good old poke around the back of the music closet. Whined half the night.

Last Friday, when I was ready to take Maisie over to her new home-from-home, she was nowhere to be found. Normally she’s quite good at coming when called, but not then. Eventually I gave up, put some more food in her bowl (along with a few treats) and went off on my own. Imagine Ember’s excitement on Saturday morning when she was allowed into the bedroom with us. She looked everywhere. Under the bed, in the bathroom, in the walk-in closet, in the storage room behind the closet. EVERYWHERE. No cat ANYWHERE. And she got to be on the bed. Ember heaven.

I went back to my place to have another go at fetching Maisie. Oh, there she was, on the bed, looking at me with a “What?” expression on her face. Into the cage in the car, over to second home where Ember was briefly contained in one room while I got Maisie upstairs. We did not put the baby gate up on the landing. At bedtime that night, Ember was content to be left on her own on the couch, knowing there was no damned cat in the house and she would be allowed into the bedroom in the morning. Then, when we were halfway up the stairs, Maisie, who’d been left on her own for rather a long time, started meowing and all hell broke loose. Hmm.

We’ve bought a muzzle. Part of the instructions that come with the muzzle suggest that, before it goes into actually use, some time is spent offering the dog treats to be licked up by inserting nose into muzzle. Basic psychology. Get the dog associating the muzzle with treats and the dog will (hopefully) be less resistant to wearing it. His job, during the week when I am not there (and, more importantly, neither is Maisie), is to perform the treats/muzzle ploy as often as possible. If we can get Ember to the point that having the muzzle on does not make her crazy, then I think it will be time for her to officially meet Maisie. Maybe this weekend coming up. Maybe not. But this is a problem we have to solve. I am not prepared to move Maisie somewhere where she is forced to stay inside. And I am certainly not prepared to risk her – literally – having her head bitten off by one of the residents of the house.

I like to think they will eventually be friends. If that is too much to expect, then I like to think Maisie will win Ember over either through the sheer loveliness of her personality or by introducing Ember to exactly what cat claws can do to a dog’s nose. Hopefully the former, but I’ll settle for the latter, because I am not settling anywhere else until this is fixed.

Oh, my god. Time’s up. I did it! I have sat at the keyboard for two hours! I have been “writing” for two solid hours! Okay, not a play, not a novel, but it is writing, right? It seems I may not be an ex-writer after all. Fingers crossed.