Daphne Kapsali, Author at 100 days of solitude

If I’m allowed to stay (Divided Kingdom)

From Divided Kingdom: How Brexit made me an immigrant

uk border

I am not an immigrant tonight. Tonight, I am a resident of the United Kingdom. But tomorrow: what?

I moved from Athens to London in 1996, at age 18. This September, if I’m allowed to stay, I’ll celebrate twenty years in the UK.

If I’m allowed to stay. Can you imagine? Twenty years: that’s more than half my lifetime. That’s my entire experience as an adult; that’s pretty much everything I know about the world, everything I’ve learned about how to conduct myself in it, everything I’ve become. When I come to Greece, I don’t quite know how to make myself fit in. I am awkward, I am strange, I am, somehow, a little displaced. I don’t know how to ask for the things I need; I use English words where the Greek ones elude me. I apologise too much, and hold doors open for people who storm through them, casting me hurried looks of confusion or contempt. I have trouble crossing roads because the cars keep coming at me from the wrong side, and they don’t seem to obey the rules of traffic that I’m used to. I don’t belong here. My passport may be Greek, but I’ve been marked for Britain. I am a Londoner. I’ve never been an immigrant, so far.

To the best of my knowledge, I’ve never stolen anyone’s job. I’ve never accepted lower than average wages, making it impossible for the British jobseekers to compete with my rock-bottom immigrant standards. I came from a country that considered itself prosperous; I came to go to university, not to survive. I didn’t come for better; I came for good. If anything, my standards were unrealistically high.
In the early days, in the late nineties when barwork was still cool, my colleagues behind the bar were all British, every single one of them, and we all interviewed for our positions. We were all on minimum wage and we all spent most of our earnings on beer and dancing and late-night kebabs.
And later, when the EU opened its doors to many more nations, the ratio of foreign to native workers in the hospitality world settled at around 50/50, perhaps even tipping to 60/40 in favour of the foreigners, but it wasn’t because the latter were being chosen over their British counterparts. It was because the British weren’t applying. I know, because I was the one going through the CVs. Having gone off and done other jobs and got myself a Masters in Creative Writing, I wandered back into barwork in the mid- to late-noughties. My own generation had long moved on by now, and the kids, it seems, were no longer interested in serving drinks. I don’t know where they went or what they were doing, but they certainly weren’t queuing up for jobs in pubs and being rejected in favour of cheap Polish (and Greek) labour. Perhaps they were signing on: they were, after all, entitled to benefits; we were not. Because – in case you wondered – no: you don’t just stroll past the borders and sign on, and then sit back and drink cider out of a plastic bottle and have lots of foreign babies to drain the country’s resources. They don’t let you do that. Funnily enough. You have to earn it.

In twenty years, I’ve never signed on. In twenty years, I’ve never applied for or received any benefits. In the twenty years that I’ve been making National Insurance contributions, both through PAYE and voluntarily, through self-employment, I have probably received statutory sick pay twice. In twenty years, I’ve visited NHS hospitals three times, and my GP perhaps ten, mostly to renew my prescription for the contraceptive pill (not a single foreign baby in sight). I’ve had one filling part-subsidised by the NHS. I’ve paid several thousand pounds in taxes. I’ve paid several thousand pounds more in rent to British taxpayers.

I think, on balance, I’ve probably put more into this country, financially, than I’ve taken out. I think, on balance, I haven’t drained this country’s resources all that much. I have earned my benefits, but I have never abused them. And I’ve chosen this country, I’ve adopted it as my own and Britain, in turn, has never treated me like an immigrant. So far. This Great Britain, made up of immigrants and thriving on the multitude of cultures that it’s embraced. Gradually, yes, and with difficulty at first, but bravely and wholeheartedly, for the most part, with the openness that makes this Britain great.

And yet, tomorrow: what? Will I become in immigrant, at last, in this country that made me who I am? Will Britain make me an immigrant, at last, twenty years on?

I think I’d like to celebrate my twenty-year anniversary in the pub. I don’t go to pubs that often anymore, but it seems appropriate. I’ll drink a pint of lager with my friends and later, perhaps, we’ll go dancing. We might even have a kebab on the way home, but a nice one, and we’ll sit down to eat it, with cutlery. Our standards are still quite high.

I think I’d like to do that, if I’m allowed to stay.

This is the first of five essays written in the immediate aftermath of the EU referendum in June 2016. The first four were published as Divided Kingdom: How Brexit made me an immigrant. Click here to download the Kindle version of the book for free on Amazon – or read part two, part three, part four, and part five here.

And before anyone else rushes to point this out: no, I no longer live in the UK. And yes, in a way, Brexit won. It drove me out. I left London, the place that I’d called home for 20 years, and moved to an island in Greece. But not without sadness, not without regret, not without looking back. I look back all the time because, no, I still haven’t given up on the United Kingdom that I love. And yes, in a way, I still identify as a Londoner. And I’m lucky in that I had other options, but I’d still like the option to come back.

A reciprocity of a different kind

I’ve thought long and hard about how to put this. I’ve agonised over it, gone round and round in circles in my head, practised words that never sounded right, stepped back from the circle and put it off, again and again.

Because I need to ask you for reviews, but without making it sound like there’s any expectation or obligation or pressure. I need to ask you for reviews, but without offering anything in return – nothing more tangible than thanks and gratitude – because this isn’t about enticement or rewards; because it depends on a reciprocity of a different kind. I need to ask you for reviews without sounding like I’m begging. Because that word has come up; that word has been thrown at me by trolls, “Look at you, having to beg for reviews”, and it cut me. Deep. I need to ask you for reviews, and I don’t know how. A full four years after I published my first book, I still don’t know how.

Because I want to ask you for reviews without asking, without having to ask, and it’s impossible. Because if you want something, you have to ask. If you need something, you have to ask. And therein lies the obligation; therein lies the dept: you owe it to yourself to ask. To draw a circle and stand in the middle, exposed, for everyone to see, and ask. Knowing that you might be rejected. That you will be. Knowing that rejection is a certainty.

I didn’t know about reviews when I first started out, four years ago, as a “published author”; I didn’t know about them before, in all my years as a reader. I didn’t know what they meant, how much they meant, how much of an impact they could have. I didn’t know how it felt to have none, or to get your first one. I didn’t know how it would feel to watch that number grow, to have a trickle of strangers pick up your book and read it and then return to Amazon unprompted to post a review because they wanted to share what it had meant to them. I didn’t know how a certain number of reviews could affect your visibility and your ranking and your sales, that mad, almighty Amazon algorithm than has the power to make little lines appear on your sales dashboard graph. And I didn’t know about the trolls. I didn’t know that there were people who knew about reviews, and who would randomly, arbitrarily, inexplicably manipulate the system for the express purpose of doing you harm. Who would go out of their way to place obstacles in yours, to belittle you, to discredit your work, to destroy you with a few careful, careless words. I didn’t know any of this then, but I know it now. Reviews matter.

And we make jokes, those of us who find ourselves exposed to judgement and critique; those of us who, for whatever reason or cause, place ourselves in any kind of spotlight – no matter how small or faint. We laugh, those of us who find ourselves under attack, “Haha, you have a troll; that’s a sign of success!” – but honestly, no: not in my book. Rejection is one thing, indifference another, and you will never please everyone, you’ll never be that person (author, artist, actor, politician, friend) that everyone likes, but the fact that there are people out there so bitter, so angry, so unhappy that they set out to take others down, to deliberately cause them damage, cannot be any measure of success, neither personal nor universal. It is a symptom of a very fucked up society that we’re supposed to be OK with this. That we’re supposed to shrug it off, to toughen up, grow thicker skin, grin and bear it, take the high road, claim the moral high ground.

Speaking for myself, I can tell you that tough doesn’t mean unbreakable, and there are words, perfectly targeted razor blades of hate, that can cut through the thickest of skins, and expose what we all are, underneath: vulnerable. Insecure, frightened, uncertain, and trying to make our way through this life as undamaged as possible. Speaking for myself, I can tell you I never set out to make any claims or take any road except my own, such as it is, as high or as low as it might be. I am prepared to cross a certain number of bridges on my way, but I cannot accept that ignoring the trolls lurking there, being advised to grin as they sink their teeth into me, as they chew up everything I’ve worked for and spit out vicious one-star reviews is any kind of sane response to the situation. Or in any way productive. All it does is foster the troll mentality, set them up in quaint little burrows, wifi-enabled, under their bridges, whence they can launch their attacks in extra comfort. I see nothing to grin about here.

And if we’re gonna talk about morality: speaking for myself, I find the whole thing morally questionable, and highly irresponsible. For both sides. Because, in school- or workplace-bullying, we have at least acknowledged that both parties need support. We do not advise the child who’s had his head held down the toilet to grin and bear it, nor the woman who’s systematically undermined and ostracised at work to grow tougher skin. We do not congratulate them on their status as victims and targets of abuse. And the perpetrators in these situations, those who are driven to cause harm to others, are not simply dismissed as “bullies” and allowed to carry on, nor abandoned to their hatred and unhappiness until they consume them. They are seen as people, probably battling with untold shit of their own, who need help as much as those they victimise. They are not just cast as storybook monsters: they are given a chance at healing, and redemption.

It sounds like I have sympathy for the bullies and the trolls. And, on a human level, I do. There is probably suffering behind their words and actions, and my skin is not so thick that I am untouched by their pain. But when we cross into some fucked-up cyber-fairytale where I am cast as a victim of success and the monsters are allowed to roam free and we’re all ruled by the Almighty Algorithm in the Sky, no: there is obligation here, there is responsibility, and it’s on me. I have to stand up for myself. Amazon is not a kindly schoolteacher or an understanding boss; Amazon is a business. It does have systems in place (more algorithms) to ensure the objectivity of its reviews and ratings, but they can only go so far. Beyond that, it cannot protect me. Amazon is a jungle, and I refuse to be cast as prey.

I can stand up for myself, but I cannot take on the bullies on my own; I need my pack. So here’s what I’m asking of you: to stand beside me. To be my allies, to be my pack. And if you have enjoyed reading any of my books, to say so. I cannot take the bullies down, nor their reviews; I cannot fight the trolls with fairytale swords, but I can fight them with words. Yours, this time. Your words are the antidote to their poison. My words have gone into my books; they are the best, the most I have to give. My books are all I have to say for myself, and I say this in the most unassuming way possible: I cannot do any better than this. They are my best effort to make sense of the world, my best attempt to connect with those whom I share it with. And if I have been successful in that, I am asking you: please say so. Without obligation, without reward, and prompted only gently. By choice. Just like you chose to read my books in the first place; just like I chose to write them, and put them out there to be judged. Knowing that rejection was a certainly but hoping, nonetheless, to forge some ties that go beyond a financial transaction. For a reciprocity of a different kind.

Thank you.

Below are Amazon universal links to all of my books; they should, in theory, take you to each book’s page in your local Amazon store.

100 days of solitude

you can’t name an unfinished thing

This Reluctant Yogi: everyday adventures in the yoga world

Collected: essays and stories on life, death and donkeys

Divided Kingdom: How Brexit made me an immigrant

Common People

Death by any other name

For Now: notes on living a deliberate life

P.S. Even those books that have, so far, escaped the attentions of trolls could do with a bit of review love. 🙂

We are all hypocrites

A few years ago, my boyfriend and I Acknowledged Valentine’s Day. And before you skip past my deliberate capitalisation of the event and miss its monumental implications, let me tell you this: we were the sort of couple who had relegated terms of affection to acronyms and shorthand, declaring magnanimously, but not too frequently, LY, lest the expanded version, I love you, placed shackles upon our unconventional souls and tainted the purity of our connection. Which, actually, words often do. But anyway.
    I use a sarcastic tone in the telling of this because I am a hypocrite, but I liked it. It was who we were, together. He was M, I was D, and we L(oved)E(ach)O(ther). We still do. But for all the love that was never in doubt, we quite categorically did not acknowledge Valentine’s Day. We didn’t need to. We LEO every moment (we broke life down in moments, not hours or days) and what was V-Day, anyway, but a grossly commercialised blah-blah designed to create feelings of inadequacy in the non-conventionally-coupled and paper over the cracks of millions of broken relationships with loveheart-adorned sticky tape while generating profits for the cold-hearted capitalists who care nothing for our actual happiness, which, no matter how nicely your wrap it, will never be found in a box of chocolates and a mass-produced card stating, boldly or calligraphically, “Be my Valentine”. FFS.
    And yet.
    Sometime in the late afternoon of that particular Valentine’s Day, which I was actively Not Acknowledging and very deliberately expecting nothing, I received two photographs on Skype. (M and I were living in separate countries at the time, and conducting our non-shackled relationship entirely over Skype.) I opened them up and I cried and I had to sit down for a moment, because nothing in all the years I had known M had prepared me for this. Because the man who had once felt the urge to buy me flowers and found it so alarming that he practically threw them at me, had on this day gone to his local café and spelled HAPPY VDAY DAF in sugar sachets. And got the barista to draw a heart in his latte. Because we are all hypocrites. All of us.

So I cried, and typed WTF into our Skype chat, and waited for the dizziness to pass, and then I drew a little V-Day themed comic strip, acknowledging our acknowledgement of the occasion, and admitting defeat. I took a photo of it, and sent it on its way, and imagined the ping on M’s side of the connection, imagined how he reached for the mouse and clicked on the image to enlarge it, how he looked at it and smiled and looked away and looked back and smiled again, how his shoulders sagged with something like relief, a momentary letting down of his guard, and how he felt, how much time he gave himself to feel, how long he allowed that moment to last, before unfolding his long body slowly out of his chair and walking away, into the next moment, into yet another day where there were things to be done, just another day in the month of February, as significant and insignificant as any other.

I imagined all this, because we never talked about it. We never said, hey, that was weird. We never said, perhaps we’re a little more conventional than we’d like to think; perhaps we’re defining ourselves more than we know with our lack of definitions. We never said, perhaps all those acronyms aren’t really protecting us from anything, after all. We never said, fuck it, I fucking love you on Valentine’s Day, you complete fucking hypocrite that I chose for the love of my life. We never said. And I can only imagine what might have happened if we had. What sort of story I’d be writing now, and whether I’d be looking forward to tomorrow, to a Valentine’s Day that I was free to acknowledge, albeit with a knowing smirk to indicate my awareness of the grossly commercialised blah-blah. I’ll never know what might have happened if M and I had been brave enough to step through the door we’d opened on that day, because, just like that time with the flowers, many years before, we pretended it hadn’t happened at all. And it didn’t protect us, in the end. In the end, things happen, whether we acknowledge them or not.

We are all hypocrites. And not saying I love you because it’s Valentine’s Day is just as hypocritical as only saying it for the occasion. Not giving a card when you might want to just as empty of truth as giving it because it is expected. Not spelling your feelings out in sugar sachets, not buying flowers when you have the urge, not expecting anything, not crying when you get it, not letting your shoulders sag with relief when you take a risk and it’s reciprocated, not acknowledging your most basic, most conventional need to be loved, fully and openly and in so many words, on any day and every day – none of it will protect you, in the end. Squeezing your feelings into acronyms does not make them any smaller, and not speaking of things because they are implied has implications of its own. And admitting to all of this doesn’t make me any less of a hypocrite because, I can promise you, if anyone asks me, even now, how I feel about Valentine’s Day, I will assume a carefully cynical expression, half-amused and half-offended at even being asked, and dismiss it as grossly commercialised blah-blah that I have no need of. And I will not say how the man who was once the love of my life is now someone whose everyday life I can only imagine, and how little it bothers me, and how strange that feels, how it is both sad and liberating. I will not say how I wish that my own everyday life was such that I could be looking forward to tomorrow as a day that I had expectations of, or that I were in a position to climb to the highest peak of this island I live on and scream, fuck it, I fucking love you on Valentine’s Day, and on any other fucking day in February or any month you care to name, for everyone to hear. I will not say how my careful cynicism did not protect me from feeling this way again, or from making the same mistakes. I will not say how my unconventional soul longs to be tainted by the most conventional simplicity of a love that’s so clearly defined, so straightforward as to be spoken of openly, in all the words. I will not say any of this, and tomorrow will be yet another Valentine’s Day that I do not acknowledge.
But maybe next year, maybe next time. Maybe next time someone brings me flowers, I will graciously, gratefully accept; maybe I’ll let him see me cry. Maybe I will step through the next door that is opened to me; maybe the next time I find myself in a position to spell my feelings out for all to see, I will. Maybe I’ll bring someone flowers myself, or a card with lovehearts on, on Valentine’s Day. Not tomorrow, but maybe next year, I won’t give a shit about being unconventional, only about being happy. In whatever wrapping it comes.

Happy Valentine’s Day. Whether you choose to acknowledge it or not.

And because I am not immune to the grossly commercialised capitalist blah-blah, let me just mention in passing that both the above books are love stories. And available to buy on Amazon, if the urge takes you. On this or any other day.

New moons and minotaurs and what it all means

New Moons ans Minotaurs

There’s a new moon tonight, and a partial solar eclipse in Capricorn. I don’t know what that means. I know that the moon waxes and wanes and affects our waters; I know that new moons represent new beginnings. I know that eclipses are meant to be mystical; they pull the curtains on that which is no longer needed, and show us the darker side of ourselves. I know that there are a lot of Capricorns in my life and that where there’s a lot of anything, it’s generally been invited. I know a lot of stuff, but I don’t always know what stuff means, and I can only guess at the meaning of moons and eclipses in Capricorn.

I am advised to burn sage and set intentions. Harness the energy of the eclipse and the new moon. The energy of Capricorn. But I don’t know what that means. How can I, timid Gemini, ever get a grip on those mad, wild goats? They trot past me on their Capricorn missions, while I wander in their wake, trailing questions, dreaming up the words to explain them. I get lost in the labyrinth of my emotions that they have no patience for, and all the minotaurs are Capricorns in disguise, bull-headed bastards that they are, guarding the secret of their souls. I, crafty Gemini, hold the thread, I am the one who weaves the tales, but the endings always lead me back to the minotaur. And you’d think I’d know about circles and cycles, the moons and the stars, and that karma is basically a loop, but I don’t know what any of it means.

They scare the crap out of me, these Capricorns, but it’s obvious that I need them. I, flighty Gemini, need something of their firmness so I can learn to stand my ground. But firmness is one thing when it comes to standing, and yet another when you’re throwing yourself against a wall: they can be hard; they pride themselves on being hard. And I, mercurial masochist, am drawn to them like a moth to the flame. Except the flame is a cold, hard wall, with horns sticking out, and I am the words shattered, scattered on the ground by their feet. There’s a lot of collecting yourself when you’re around them – and I, all-over-the-place Gemini, choose to be around them, time and time again. I keep inviting them in. I collect them, like butterflies in a book – but listen to this: they only stay pinned down because they want to; have you ever tried to keep a goat captive? They roll their eyes at my stories, demonstrating their impatience with the labyrinth of my thoughts, but they’re always there, at the end of the thread, and they tug on it as much as I do.

Whatever’s there once the light returns after an eclipse is what is meant to be there; eclipses, I am told, will never take away the things that belong in your life. The rest, however, under relentless Capricorn, is fair game. I’m not sure how I feel about Capricorn taking my things away, or dictating what’s worthy enough to keep. They’re always judging, these Capricorns, and I, insecure Gemini, keep submitting myself to their judgement, to their impossible, implacable rules. But listen to this: even as they dismiss me, they keep a firm hold upon the thread. And for all their eye-rolling, once the darkness clears, they’re always there; impatiently waiting for my meandering explanations, for the tales I unfold to reveal the secret of their souls. We need each other. They teach me how it feels to stand my ground, and I teach them about falling; they learn how to crack, sometimes, if not shatter, while I learn that it’s possible to stay in one piece. To stand before them is to learn I’m not so timid, not so flighty, not so insecure after all; to crumble at their feet is to teach them they don’t always have to be hard. And on it goes, in the endless loop of our karma, or whatever.

What does any of it mean? We’re all just guessing. We’re all just as lost as each other, and looking for explanations in the stars, navigating labyrinths of our own making, following threads that always lead us back to the minotaurs of our personal mythologies, our darker sides, the lessons we have still to learn. And if you’re reading this as neither Capricorn nor Gemini and you’re wondering where you might fit, don’t worry: none of us fit. We’re all just as messed up as each other, regardless of what particular configuration of planets we were born under. We’re all just going round our circles, our endless karmic loops, guided or aided or hindered by the stars, orbiting planets of our own making, whomever we’ve chosen to set up as the sun in our skies, whomever we’ve given the power to eclipse us. But when the darkness clears, each time, every time, we’ll still be there. Capricorns and Geminis, Libras and Virgos, and the full moon in Aquarius, and Venus opposing Saturn: none of it means anything. None of us fit, but we all belong. We all need each other.

P.S. This piece was five days in the writing because what’s also happening right now is that Capricorn has stolen Mercury, planet of communication, and the goats are expressing themselves all over the place while the rest of us are struggling for words. Dudes, kindly: I want my planet back.

Photograph by Paul Rysz on Unsplash

You can do things without love

Day 100 / 22 December 2014

100 days of solitude — Me and my book, celebrating our 4-year anniversary of 100 days, on this morning of December 22, 2018. Neither of us have done our hair.

Should there be a drumroll at this stage, or a quiet slipping, like I said, from one day to another? It could be either, and neither feels quite right, and day 100 is not a summary of days, and you can’t bring one hundred days together with words, so that they mean something.

Eleni told me a story that made me laugh. It was about her brother-in-law, John, who, upon tasting his first sugared kumquat, apparently commented: “It is like making love for the first time. You don’t really understand what’s happening to you.” It made me laugh, and then it made me think: about love and making love and the things we don’t really understand.

My first time wasn’t like a kumquat. It was a strange experience but, looking back, kind of tasteless. The act took place at a house party, an hour out of town, in the early summer of 1994; a bunch of us were staying overnight, unsupervised. This was a couple of weeks past my sixteenth birthday, and my boyfriend and I had just celebrated our three-month anniversary. The stars didn’t line up to bring us together in sweet, if awkward, lovemaking on a mild June evening that we would both remember fondly. It was coldly understood that this would be the night. It was about opportunity and the dispatching of a task. So much for the romantic dreams of teenage girls; so much for the endless lines of poetry this teenage girl had written for other, earlier loves. There was no poetry in this, and no romance. I liked the boy well enough and we had called it love. But the truth was a cold one: I just wanted the thing over with and I remember it, if anything, with shame.
And so it was, a task performed, awkwardly and quickly, on one of two twin beds we had been allocated for the night. I knew what was happening to me; I knew the mechanics of the act and what to expect, and my expectations were met by a mechanical act. I was a little disappointed that it didn’t hurt, as advertised; I grieved a little for the drama that wasn’t there. A trip to the bathroom yielded a single smudge of blood, a private hanging of the wedding sheets. I flushed the tissue down the toilet, returned to the bedroom to get dressed, and went to join my friends, in other rooms, leaving my boyfriend, used up, still and silent on the bed. We both knew what had happened, what we’d done, but neither of us understood. Neither of us said a word.
He was gone when I returned, out in town with the boys, and I was relieved. This was a private thing, and he was no longer part of it. I found my walkman and crawled into a hammock in the garden and swung, back and forth, all night, listening to a song on repeat. The song was called Thanatos: death. I had been cold on this warm summer evening; I had gotten rid of my virginity and my boyfriend by a single act, and I felt nothing. But I thought I understood that love hurts, and in the absence of love I chose the hurt, and a song called Death with beautiful, heartbreaking lyrics to fill the gaps where poetry should have been.

There has been love since, and poetry, and lovemaking that hurt in the ways that it should and didn’t need a soundtrack, and I still don’t really understand. I can’t speak for kumquats, but I don’t think lovemaking is meant to be understood. There have been times when I have stopped, midway, to say “What is this? What is happening?”, and those are the times I will remember. Wonder, bafflement, awe: that’s how you know something extraordinary is happening to you. It will be a terrible day, a day of mourning, when such a thing as love can be understood.
I think I understand now that I was mourning something on that night in June. The passing, maybe, of the teenage girl whose poetry amounted to nothing, the girl who thought a mechanical act could be transformed into something meaningful just because you call it love. But I think I learned something, too, about the absence of love; I learned it, on that night, as I swung in a hammock with a song called Death on repeat, but it took me twenty years to understand.

You might get lucky and throw kumquats and love and poetry and death together and make some kind of sense, but you can’t bring one hundred days together with words. And day 100 is not a summary of days, and it isn’t the day that love was understood. But I think I understand, finally, about its absence: you can do things without love. But if you live your life mechanically, performing acts and dispatching tasks in cold understanding, you leave no room for poetry or bafflement or awe. You can’t transform that into something meaningful just because you call it a life. You’ve gotta put in the things you love and leave gaps that ache and need to be filled up with some sort of poetry, whatever stands for poetry in your life. You can do things without love, but they’ll amount to nothing, and you will remember them with shame, if you remember them at all. That’s what I learned in that hammock, and it took twenty years and one hundred days of doing what I love to understand.
And day 100 is not a summary of days. Maybe it’s like a kumquat; like I’ve tasted something I cannot quite describe, but want to taste again. It’s like one of those times that I’ll remember, and I’m lying here, naked and aching and a little out of breath, and I’m thinking “What just happened?” and I don’t really understand. But there is wonder and bafflement and awe and scattered lines of poetry trying to put into words what you cannot, and I know it was something extraordinary. And it’s like that first time, too, a thing completed as I expected it would, and my sheets hung up and flapping in the wind for everyone to see, one hundred days of word-stained sheets to prove it, and nothing to show for it in private but a smudge of blood and a sense of mourning. Day 100 is both: it’s both a drumroll and a quiet slipping into something else, the day after, whatever comes next.
Or maybe it’s a drumroll to distract you, so I can slip away, quietly, out of sight, and mourn it a little, in private, the end of a hundred days, and celebrate it, too, because I did it, for love. And then I’ll sit alone, in a solitude no longer shared, and think about love and making love and all the things that I don’t understand. All the things that I cannot put into words, and will keep trying, regardless, for all of my days, because this is what I love. This is what comes next. This is what I call a life. It baffles the hell out of me, and it has a weird soundtrack, but it’s extraordinary.

This is Day 100, the final day of 100 days of solitude, written on December 22, 2014. You can buy 100 days of solitude on Amazon, in paperback and on Kindle, or read it for free with Kindle Unlimited or Prime Reading (US).

Winter Solstice

Day 99 / 21 December 2014

It’s very quiet this morning. Slow clouds, and the sun undecided. So still that it feels like the day is encased in stillness, immobilised, rather than just not moving. I went outside and stood still, too; it feels wrong, somehow, almost absurd to move in this landscape. Only a bird cuts through momentarily, small birds in low flight, the fleeting motion emphasising the stillness, not breaking it. Still life, natura morta: dead nature, but it is very much alive. It’s just that nature knows how to stay still. It’s only humans who think they need to be in motion all the time.
    Today is the Winter Solstice. The shortest day of the year; the longest night. ‘It’s officially winter,’ Iro told me, but winter is just the earth tilting towards spring. From tomorrow, the days will start stretching, incrementally, a few seconds at a time, pushing against the nights, gaining upon them slowly, until the Spring Equinox, that short moment of balance when night and day are equals, before the balance shifts again towards the longer days of summer.
    Perhaps what this day is doing is paying its respects to the night. Standing still, to attention, to mark its moment of supremacy, this once-a-year triumph of dark over light, before the struggle begins again. But the sun made its mind up regardless, threw off the shyness of autumn and chose the solstice to be reborn, blazing, in the winter sky, as the legends said it would. The day exploded in light.
    I went outside again and stood still in the stillness, with my arms open wide and my eyes shut and my face turned towards the sun. Me and all the flowers and the plants of this still life, turned towards the sun. It was too strong to look at; it burned orange behind my eyelids, in perfect complement to the blue of the sky.

I saw the world in motion last night. This place that has become my world, my winter version of Sifnos, so quiet and still that it had me fooled: I saw how it moves on a Saturday evening. I owe it to a stranger, that I saw this. I owe him for showing me, another debt of gratitude, of many, that I’ve accrued in these past ninety-nine days.
There was nothing extraordinary about it, this evening that moved me, gently, from where I stood. I could have spent it on my sofa, as always, in the solitude I’ve learned. But I went for coffee in a café with a stranger, at 6:30 pm. This happened because he wrote to me and asked and then last night, maybe a month later, I said yes. I don’t know why it took that long. My first instinct was no, I’m not meeting strangers for coffee; my second was that I’m not here to make friends. And then suspicion, cynicism. “There are no strangers here; only friends you haven’t yet met”, but strangers aren’t all good people, and staying still is easier and safer than making a move that might turn out wrong.
But then, last night, something shifted. It might have been the fact that I called it one hundred days and named them for solitude, and they are coming to an end, and I am passing into days that are not numbered and not named. It might be that I’ve learned the solitude, and now it’s time to learn new things, like meeting strangers and making friends. Time to make a move and step into this world that I inhabit.

The secret café of winter Sifnos is only secret until you stop walking past and walk in. Perhaps I didn’t feel that I had earned it, the right to enter, while I was playing a game of one hundred days. Perhaps that’s what moved me from my sofa. I pushed the door open, and a stranger looked up and raised his hand, and we had coffee, in a café, on a Saturday evening, with music low enough to have a conversation, and the air swirling with smoke, and the smell of coffee, and the hum of voices, and people coming and going and waving and saying hello, and winding and unwinding scarves and opening and closing the door. Nothing extraordinary about it, just the ordinary life that I recognise, and easy, like spending an evening with a friend. Which is what makes it extraordinary: there are no strangers here, on this island, but few of them turn out to feel like friends. And I’ve been lucky that I’ve met them, despite the game of solitude I’ve learned to play so well.

Is it significant that Day 99 coincides with the Winter Solstice and I go into Day 100 as the world tips over into winter? Is that the right verb even, coincides? Was it scheduled, like the solstice and the equinox, like the fact that, at opposite ends of the year, light conquers dark and dark conquers light? Is it coincidence that it took me this long to see through the stillness and move into ordinary life? Someone asked me if I timed it on purpose so that my hundred days would end before Christmas, but there was never any plan. But as I stand here, one day short, on the dark end of the year, I wonder.

I saw the world in motion last night, but I’m taking my cues from the solstice today and staying still, against my nature but in keeping with nature, to pay my respects to this day and this night, and all the days and nights that came before them, one short of a hundred, before the world tips over and it begins again. I will observe the stillness and stand in gratitude to all those people, the strangers and the friends, in every part of this world that’s always moving, who helped me find light in days that grew darker but never felt dark, that grew shorter but were always long enough, those people who moved me, and stilled my fears, and kept me moving when I became too still, and kept me here, one day short of one hundred. Who showed me things I hadn’t seen and have me, always, in their debt.

And as I stand here, still, on the dark end of the year, I can see all the way across it to the Summer Solstice, and between then and now only days, unnumbered and named for nothing, wide open and growing longer as the light pushes against the night; ordinary life, only secret until you stop playing a game and push the door open and walk into a place that you recognise. There are no strangers, and the secret is how easy it’s always been.

This is Day 99 of 100 days of solitude. It was written on December 21, 2014, and it is dedicated to Leo. You can buy 100 days of solitude from Amazon, in paperback and on Kindle, or you can read it for free with Kindle Unlimited or Prime Reading (US).

Identity: the stories we tell ourselves

St. Paul's Cathedral

The first time I wore a pencil skirt, my boyfriend ran away from me. But that was after I misplaced St. Paul’s Cathedral.

Identity. The stories we tell ourselves. I am a Londoner therefore of course I know where St. Paul’s Cathedral is. Except, when I came out of the tube station, I didn’t. I stood amongst the crowds of map-happy tourists and miserable City dwellers combined, exuding an air of “I know exactly where I’m going” while squinting, as nonchalantly as squinting will allow, at my baffling surroundings which – inexplicably, impossibly – did not feature a giant dome. But I’m a Londoner and it’s St. Paul’s Cathedral. Of course I’m not gonna ask. I spotted a churchy-looking building in the distance and, to the tune of “Feed the birds, tuppence a bag” and flashes of pigeons and Dick Van Dyke serving as the only images my brain could supply of the landmark in question, I set off confidently in the opposite direction. After reaching the impostor (a tall, rectangular thing, the opposite, perhaps, of a dome) and establishing, firmly, that I was an idiot, I laughed at myself and surreptitiously checked Google Maps on my phone. And then, as my blue dot made its way back to where I’d come from, I used the phone to call the person I was now late meeting: Pencil Skirt Catrina, in town for a few days from Liverpool, who’d managed to find St. Paul’s Cathedral without any trouble at all.
‘I have to confess,’ I told her, half-hysterical, in the first conversation we’d ever had, ‘that I’ve lived in this city for 20 years and I don’t actually know where St. Paul’s is.’ To my immense relief, she laughed, this stranger who now knew me to be an idiot.
‘It’s a giant dome!’ she pointed out, as the thing itself finally came into view. A giant fucking dome. And I walked straight past it, because I am a Londoner. Do you see where I’m going with this?

I didn’t see it, to begin with. I was meeting with Catrina to talk about pencil skirts and writing. Specifically: I was going to write about pencil skirts. And though I was intrigued, I just couldn’t see it. I’d never worn a pencil skirt; I had no pencil skirt stories in me as yet. I didn’t see what these pencil skirts were all about. I saw Catrina, tall and imposing and elegant in hers – fittingly – but warm and funny and unconventional, the kind of person who is amused that you stood her up because you misplaced St. Paul’s Cathedral. My kind of person. In a pencil skirt. What does this say about her? What does it say about me, late and flustered in my uniform of jeans and All Stars, questioning my credentials as a Londoner and trying not to jump to conclusions?

This happens all the time. We learn things, important things, and then we forget them. And I forgot the most important lesson of all: that you can be exactly who you want to be. I learnt it bit by bit, day by day, by being all sorts of people I’d never been before. By doing things I’d never thought I’d do, simply because I hadn’t done them. But that’s where our stories come in. The preconceptions that we write ourselves into. I am a Londoner. I am never late. I always drink my coffee this way. This is who I am. And then: I’ve never worn a pencil skirt becomes I don’t. I’m not that kind of person. But which kind of person is that, exactly?

Identity. The costumes we put on. I have a ring in my nose and ink on my skin. What does that tell you about who I am? I used to wear a lot of jewellery but it began to weight me down so I took it off. Life is a lot lighter when you have less to prove.
    There was a time when a man who had been flirting with me all night insisted that I was a lesbian. We had just met at my work Christmas party, and happened to catch the same tube home.
    ‘I’m not,’ I told him, ‘but what made you think so?’
    Was it my boy-short hair, I wondered? Was it the big, chunky boots? Was it the fact that I spent most of the evening smoking with the boys in the garden? Was it that I swear a lot?
    ‘No,’ he said. It was none of that. It was my nose ring.
    My nose ring: an item I have never associated with any particular type of sexuality; a relic of teenage rebellion; a thing I barely know is there.
    Which goes to show that it really doesn’t matter what you say or do or what costumes you dress yourself in. People will draw their own conclusions anyway. Sometimes stereotypical, sometimes completely inexplicable but always theirs, not yours. You might as well do what you like. You might as well have fun with it. It’s how you see yourself that matters and even that, arguably, matters very little at all.

‘I’ve never worn a pencil skirt,’ I confessed to Catrina over coffee. ‘It isn’t me.’
And Catrina smiled and explained why pencil skirts were everyone, and as she talked I began to see it, the thing that I’d missed: this wasn’t about an item of clothing; this was about a symbol. And symbols I understand; symbols I can get behind. And this particular symbol was one that I could wear. I could put it on and see what kind of person it made me. What stories she would tell. This is the story I’d write.

I came home and gave my boyfriend the long version of losing St. Paul’s Cathedral and finding Catrina and blah-blah, something about skirts, and he did the nodding and the making of appropriate sounds but I could see that his eyes were glazing over until I mentioned that I was going to buy a pencil skirt, as an experiment, and the light came back on.
    ‘Oh yeah?’ he said.
    ‘Yes,’ I confirmed. ‘And I will wear it!’
    ‘With heels?’
    ‘Oh. I don’t have heels. You think I need heels?’
    ‘You’ve gotta have heels.’
    So we went online and looked at pencil skirts and heels.
    ‘But I just can’t see myself in this thing,’ I argued, hesitating over the “Buy now” button.
    ‘I can,’ he said, and smiled, this man who has loved me in my jeans for many years.
    I think this counts as a pencil skirt story.

There is power in symbols, and costumes. I saw it, when I first put my pencil skirt on: I saw what Catrina was talking about. There was something about it that made this tomboy soul of mine long for things it doesn’t quite understand. Swinging hips and mysterious half-smiles. A level gaze, not arrogant, but exactly as tall as you are. Elegance. A sort of power that is exclusively, inherently female.
    And terrifying, as it turns out.
    My boyfriend walked in as I stood in the middle of the room, swaying gently as my centre of balance tried to compensate for the heels, and staring at myself in the mirror in utter bewilderment.
    There was a pause, a moment of silence.
    ‘Oh my god,’ he said.
    ‘I know!’ I took a step towards him; he took a step back.
    He made a strange sound in his throat. And: ‘You look too sexy’, he managed. Followed by: ‘I’m getting out of here.’
    He backed away carefully as I tottered uncertainly towards him, spun himself around on the spot and literally ran out the door.
    ‘Um,’ I said to his retreating back. ‘I don’t think this is the effect I was hoping for.’
    I didn’t go after him; I couldn’t, in my heels. So I stood in the doorway for a while, leaning against the frame, smoking a cigarette and channelling the femme fatales of all the ages, staring wistfully at the spot where their lover once stood, and blowing smoke rings that, when you wear a pencil skirt, look sexy and defiant. Nobody saw it, but it happened. I was that girl, for a time.

I have a friend who tells me I’m clumsy and, around her, I am. I perform that role for her. But I was a barmaid for years and never dropped a glass. And there’s no contradiction in this, after all. Do you see where I’m going now? Identity; the stories we tell. It’s just a script, a performance, a game that we play. And once you realise that, there is no greater freedom. That’s the lesson we mustn’t forget: that we have the freedom to choose who we want to be, at any given moment.

And if it takes a symbol to remind us, then so be it. If I can wear a pencil skirt, if I can be that girl and tell that story, there is no end to how many other people I can be. I can perform competent barmaid as well as I can perform hopelessly but endearingly clumsy friend; I can blend into the background in my jeans or I can stand in the middle of the room in a pencil skirt and terrify a man with my sexiness. And I don’t know if I’ll be adding more pencil skirts to my wardrobe, but as a symbol, I’ll be putting one on every day and channelling Catrina, immaculate in hers. Pencil Skirt Catrina, who is several other people, too, untouched by my preconceptions; who is a mother and a wife and a daughter and a kick-ass businesswoman and a brave entrepreneur and a former Londoner who can locate St. Paul’s Cathedral in time to meet me for coffee, and a stranger who helped me remember who I am. And maybe next time we meet she’ll be wearing a pair of jeans and I’ll stand her up again because I’m still learning to walk in my heels. And that’ll be another story.

And to draw this one to a close: if I can wear a pencil skirt, then so can you. Wear it figuratively or literally, it doesn’t matter; but wear it proudly and defiantly, and lightly, so that you can take it off anytime you like.
A word of warning, however: if you pair it with heels and your boyfriend runs away from you because you are too sexy, you won’t be able to run after him. A lot of good men have been lost that way. Better start practising your smoke rings.

This piece was commissioned, almost three years ago, by the wonderful Catrina, for the first issue of her Perfect Pencil Skirt magazine (online). I’ve no idea if it was ever published. But I’ll never forget her, or my pencil skirt moment, though I have never worn one since. And that boyfriend ran away from me for good.

Photo by Domantas Klimas on Unsplash

Bring it on

ohi day

Depression came. She came to tell me to go my bed. She came with the storm but, like the storm, I had felt her rumbling approach long before that. She likes to give warning, build up the anticipation, set you up for the plunge into her horrible anticlimax, the flatness she brings that neutralises everything into nothing.
    The day before, the Tuesday, was symbolic, and there were signs of her already. It was a national holiday, ohi day, the day of no, and it completely passed me by. On the 28th of October 1940, Benito Mussolini delivered an ultimatum to the Greek Prime Minister, Ioannis Metaxas: allow the Italian forces free passage into Greece, to occupy certain strategic locations, or there will be war. Metaxas refused but, contrary to popular misconception, he did not just say “no”; he responded in French, the diplomatic language of the day, and said: ‘Alors, c’est la guerre’. Then, it is war. But the Greeks love slogans and battle cries and, in contrast to their everyday conversation, they like them punchy and to the point. And they couldn’t very well take to the streets shouting stuff in French; they had their national pride to consider, especially on a day like this. So Alors, c’est la guerre became a resounding Greek No!, ohi, a short, two syllable word of pure defiance, and that’s the word they chanted, in their thousands, when they spilled out on the streets of Athens, until their throats were raw. And then, there was war.
    There are parades on ohi day, and marching bands, and bunting, and the Greek flag flies everywhere. The children gather in the village square, dressed in white shirts and navy blue skirts and trousers, and march proudly through town, and the officials make moving speeches about the courage and integrity of the noble race of the Greeks. All this took place on Tuesday, and I missed it, cooped up in my house on top of the hill, typing away on my computer. When I passed through town in the evening, all that remained was the bunting, a long row of blue and white flags flapping about in the breeze over the empty benches in the square.
    I felt her approach in the late afternoon, after the celebration that had gone ahead without me. Nothing too obvious, but there was a restlessness that often preludes her arrival. I dressed myself in several layers and stepped out into the final vestiges of the gloomy day. I would walk, I decided, down to the ring road and follow it round in a big circle, all the way to the supermarket, past the playground and back home; it would take about an hour. This was not a road I’d walked before. You wouldn’t do it in the summer: it’s too busy with cars using it to bypass the traffic at the centre of town and, like most of these island roads, it makes no provision for pedestrians.
    I should have known better than to expose myself to all that nothingness; I should have known I was making it too easy for her to find me. I had counted on quiet roads, a peaceful, contemplative walk to settle me down, but I’d forgotten about ohi day, and I got more than I bargained for. There was nobody around, only stillness and, every now and then, the parked up vehicles of everyday labour, abandoned only for this one short day of celebration that seemed to stretch, infinite, into the future and the past. This is a small island, but the emptiness made it seem vast, and it was exciting at first, like a child suddenly free to explore all the secret places that adults usually guard, but then I became acutely aware of my own smallness in comparison, and the feeling turned to awe.
    It wasn’t loneliness, but the actual, physical fact of being completely alone. I let myself think about it and it frightened me. A donkey stuck his head over the fence as I was passing by, and I jumped so far that I found myself on the opposite side of the road before I realised what had happened, felt immensely silly and crossed over again to pat his muzzle and apologise. I walked on, and I could hear my footsteps on the tarmac, a dog barking, echoey, in the distance, a birdcall, the dry rustle of creatures low in the grass. Nothing else, no other sounds: nothing mechanical, nothing human. An eagle circled overhead. The shadows grew deeper. A single motorbike drove past, and the noise it made seemed completely absurd in the ever-expanding stillness.
    It was a good walk, despite the fear; it made me feel alert and alive. But I should have known better than to walk alone, when she had warned me she was coming; I was too easy to find. And she came to me, like a bad fairy, and sprinkled me with her flattening dust. I took the emptiness home with me, and into town, later that evening, when I met Christina on one of her flying working trips, for a bite and a glass of wine. The process had been set in motion, and all the warmth and the unexpected company could do was stave off its inevitable conclusion for a time. I had exposed myself, and I was infected.
    And so the day of ohi passed me by, and then came Wednesday, and depression. She came with the storm, and I surrendered without a word. As the rain began to fall, I felt her twisting me up inside, turning me inside out, and then she was there, with her soothing, hypnotic voice. ‘Just lie down,’ she said. ‘Just give in, and lie down. There is nothing else to do.’ I surrendered and took to my bed, and she came to tuck me in, full of tenderness and gentle words, like a nurse for the terminally ill. Palliative care, with no hope for recovery. Just give in to it. There is nothing else. I closed my eyes, and went to sleep.
    When I woke up, the storm had been and gone but depression lingered, her heavy flatness making it hard for me to move, like a stiff old blanket that she’d laid over me while I slept. I kicked it off, and shook some life back into my limbs, enough to carry me listlessly around the house, pretending activity by making tea. Depression lingered, and whispered desolation.

The Greeks are always being defiant; we’re always looking for things to be defiant about. And when it comes to inventing battle cries, we are truly undefeated, the most notable of all being the immortal two words uttered by Leonidas of Sparta in response to the Persian King Xerxes’ demand that they lay down their arms and surrender: molon labe. Come and get them. The man had balls.
I had mislaid mine for a day, the day of defiance: I’d been a bad Greek, and let it pass me by. But then I found them again, a day late. I found my defiance, but not as I expected. I found the saddest, most embarrassing, most heartbreaking Greek songs I could think of, and played them loudly, standing up in the middle of the room, and cried, for no reason whatsoever: for nothing. And I surrendered in defiance, and I said no, a day late, but just on time. It wasn’t war, it was guerrilla warfare; dirty tactics and sad Greek songs and Leonidas’ words, paraphrased for the 21st century: bring it. Bring it the fuck on.
There were no flags and no fanfare, but it was a celebration, nonetheless, because as I cried over nothing, I realised I had nothing to cry about, and that made me laugh. Depression slunk off, taking her blanket with her, and I turned the music off and drank my tea, and painted my toenails red. Leonidas winked, and the Greek Prime Minister said some stuff in French that I didn’t understand. And the day ended, and Thursday came.

This is Day 51 from 100 days of solitude, written on October 29, 2014.

You can’t name an unfinished thing

You can't name an unfinished thing

I have the good seat on the bus, my favourite one in the back, right up against the glass partition, where I can rest my knees and lie back and watch the city go by. These bus journeys are my solace, my reprieve. My time to plug into my music and travel to wherever I want as the bus judders its way through the traffic, south to north and north to south and home again. My time to think, but I didn’t think about this. I didn’t know I was going to do it.
     The phone is in my hand. I type:
    ‘You and I are not done yet. There’s a time for us. Not now, but one day.’
    The number I haven’t used for five years comes up on the screen. I don’t remember how it got there. A new phone, a number he’s never called me on. I haven’t called him for five years. I don’t remember putting it in, but I must have done. Typed the number in from memory, saved it. Written his name. Four letters, four taps on the keyboard. His name is on my screen.
    I press send.
    I kill the screen immediately and stare ahead. I don’t want to watch it go. Wash my hands of it, but my fingers are tight around the phone. And the thing I’ve just done is travelling, unstoppable now, strange scrambled data bouncing off satellites to reconfigure itself into words on another screen. I don’t want to imagine it, how he’ll lift up his phone and read. I squeeze my eyes shut; my other hand is a fist. I can see it, how he lifts up the phone and reads the words. He doesn’t know my number. It’s only words, uncredited. He won’t reply.
    The phone shudders in my hand. My hand is shaking. I swipe and the screen lights up: ‘I know.’
    ‘Fuck.’ I say it out loud. I slam the phone into my knee, many times, repeatedly, dull thuds. ‘Fuck fuck fuck.’ A few passengers look over, roll their eyes, mutter to themselves. They do that here: they look. This isn’t London. This is as far away from London as I could get.
    Not far enough. He knows. The words have reached him, and he knows. And just like that, I’m back exactly where I started, in the palm of his hand like the words I just sent.

We’ve always liked to play with words. But betrayal is not a word you play with. Betrayal, even if you tell yourself there are reasons. Good reasons, and survival is the best. Survival means killing anything that stands in your way. Except this thing also survives: it wasn’t killed. It isn’t dead. He knows, and I’m back where I never left.

Betrayal. Not now. A long time ago. And, also, every day.

This is the opening of my much-neglected novel you can’t name an unfinished thing. It’a available, as all my books, on Amazon, in paperback and on Kindle.

Babysitting fires

There was little light by the time we finished. The dullness of the overcast day, another day when Southern winds brought clouds of desert dust to settle over us from the Sahara, now gave way to the thickening darkness of dusk and made the bonfire glow even brighter.
    ‘I have to go,’ Yiannis told me, gathering up his chainsaw and his knife and a plastic tub of petrol, and shaking the ashes off his hat before putting it on. ‘Stay a while. Have a cigarette. Watch the fire; make sure everything burns away.’
    Babysitting the fire, I thought, but I didn’t say it. There is no word for babysitting in Greek. I nodded, instead, from a small distance away, still collecting loose twigs from among the nettles, which have grown to gigantic proportions and sting even through your clothes. Underneath, livid skin and deeper down feelings to match: irritated, raw, unprotected despite the layers. Stung. But this work we’d just done helped. It soothed. The burning of things helped. The flames.
    Before he left, Yiannis kicked a few smouldering branches that had escaped to the perimeter of the bonfire back into its centre; he had his work boots on, that allow for such actions. Mine would have melted: Pull & Bear do not make boots for stomping on fires. I was envious, once again, as I often am, of Yiannis’ gear, of his preparedness, of how he knows what he needs to navigate this life, this wilderness, the tall grasses and the rocky, treacherous hills, these fires that we set. Aware, once again, of how ill-equipped I am, in comparison. How I’m just winging it, in high-street boots and too-thin jeans, and clumsy in my eagerness to fit in.
    ‘There,’ Yiannis said.
    I picked up another twig and tossed it onto the fire.
    ‘Thank you,’ I muttered. I didn’t watch him go. Yiannis may burn bright in my world, in his own way but, by now, I was all about the flames.

We’d started pruning this almond tree months ago, before Christmas. It was old and overgrown and dead in places, draining itself to support too many branches, too many possibilities reaching up and out and coming to nothing. Uncared for, untouched for years. Yiannis had shaken his head and sighed. The state of the tree almost a personal affront.
    ‘Look,’ he’d said. ‘Just look at it.’
    I looked as instructed, while he climbed up its trunk and motioned me to pass him the chainsaw. Ruthlessly, he pushed the blade into the flesh of the tree, and sent branch after branch, whole trees in themselves, crashing down with a thud and a sprinkling of woodchip confetti. Ruthlessly, but not mindlessly: every now and again, he’d stop and contemplate another branch, tilt his head and sigh, and then shift up or down or sideways, maintaining a precarious balance that makes me hold my breath every time, and apply the chainsaw again. Reducing this giant to a collection of stumps. A desolate sight, if you don’t know.
    I’d always thought of pruning as a cosmetic procedure. But it’s surgery, it’s critical; on this scale, as devastating as it looks, it’s saving a life. It’s the toughest kind of love, love with a chainsaw, but it’s exactly the kind of love that’s needed. I never knew; I’d never had cause to think about it before. Yiannis says plants and trees direct twice as much energy to dead branches as to living ones: think about that for a moment. Think about how much energy we expend to keep dead things attached, how much of ourselves we put into sustaining them. Perhaps we all need a man with a chainsaw to come along and ruthlessly rid us of the dead weight. Perhaps, for all our romantic notions and our greenhouse-grown flowers, we are all crying out for a tougher kind of love.

My task begins when Yiannis jumps down from the tree and takes the chainsaw to the felled branches, separating the ends, the bonfire fodder, from the sturdier parts that we’ll keep for firewood. We already have the fire going at this stage, and it’s my job to feed it, pulling the gnarly branches away from the tangle and tossing them onto the flames. I’m slower than I could be, although I’ve gotten better with practice, because of my pyromania. I say that as a joke, between us, and Yiannis laughs when he’s in the mood for my jokes, but there is something in it: a compulsion, a draw, something that has me stopping and staring at the fire every time I feed it another armful of twigs. I cannot turn away, not easily.
    We couldn’t get the fire going that time, before Christmas. It happens: not all fires want to be lit. It was weird weather, uncooperative, undecided. The wind kept changing direction, then dying down completely before raising violent gusts that had us running away from flying embers, but did nothing to stoke the flames. And almond wood is notoriously hard to burn. We gave up, halfway, intending to return the next day, but we never did, until now. When we were greeted by the result of our neglect. Bits of tree everywhere, half buried in the giant nettles, and the pruning itself not quite finished.
    ‘Oh, fuck,’ said Yiannis. ‘Is this the state we left it in?’
    ‘Yep,’ I confirmed. ‘Apparently it is.’
    But the fire gods were on our side this time around. And soon, after some breath-stopping rearranging of burning wood on Yiannis’ part and scavenging of flammable materials on mine, we had a beautiful raging inferno, ready to consume all of our offerings. To reduce all of our troubles to ash.

They used to frighten me, these bonfires. The recklessness, the absolute insanity of starting a fire in a field, on a dry, windy island; the illusion of control. The infinite possibilities of losing an entire village to one false move, one gust, one flaming twig blown the wrong way. I’d never have the audacity to start one myself, even now, all these months and all these fires later. I always stand aside, respectfully, and let Yiannis do his magic. And even when it comes to stoking it, I take my cues from him, two steps back and clutching handfuls of straw, watching him and the fire for clues, waiting for a nod or a shake of the head, never approaching until he bids me forward. Respect where it is due, and knowing where your place is: neither is small or easy to learn. But my place has never been on the front line, and not all of us can be firestarters. I have a different role to play and once those flames get going, they are all mine.
The illusion of control, coupled with the absolute knowing that it is only temporary, that it is only until the fire decides otherwise. The mesmeric proximity to a force so primal, so powerful that it can reduce your entire world to nothing on a whim. Respect that’s very close to fear, and the new-found courage to stand in front of a fire that’s almost twice your height, and throw half a tree onto it to make it grow taller. It used to frighten me, too, this process, this task that I knew I wasn’t equal to. Nothing in my former life had prepared me for this one. But I know what I’m doing now; I’ve worked out the jigsaw quality of this game, the mad game of flaming Tetris that we play. I know how to angle the branches and how much force I need to put behind my throws; I know how close I can get and when to stand back, when to wait and let the fire settle and how to watch for changes in the wind. All these months and all these fires later, and I can do it unsupervised, and Yiannis can keep his eyes on his chainsaw and only glance over occasionally to make sure I haven’t set myself alight. Because I, too, can be dangerous if left unattended, thoughts instead of flames consuming me to the point of destruction, reducing my entire world to nothing on a whim, subject to even the smallest changes in the wind. Or I can burn, bright and steady and beautiful, light and warmth for those who know how close to get and how to stoke me right.
That’s what we all are, that’s all we are: fires. Forces of healing and of destruction, primal creatures that contain all the possibilities and all the dangers. And firestarters, too, pyromaniacs, and guardians of the flames, babysitting the fires that we set to light up our lives, not controlled and not in control despite the illusion that we live by, the tacit agreement that we will set each other alight but not be consumed. Mesmerised by the flames. Gentle in love and tougher in love and devastating, at times, when we need to be, to save our own lives. Unprepared and ill-equipped despite all of our gear, playing a game that we don’t quite understand, playing with fire, literally, and getting burned, sometimes, when we get too close, or letting the flames die down because we didn’t have the courage to approach: clumsy in our eagerness to find our place. That’s all we are, that’s all we’re doing: winging it. Babysitting fires that we set ourselves and hoping that someone, somewhere, is glancing over every now and again, to make sure we don’t go up in flames.