I don’t have much time to be alone. Maybe the name of this Substack is no longer appropriate. But that’s the name of the Substack nevertheless. Spending all your time with a baby is very similar to spending all of your time alone. It has the same effect, in that you’re rabid for the company of other people.
I had brunch with a friend and she said I was coming across as ‘deranged’.
My baby is sick, which means the two afternoons I get to myself while he is at nursery are not viable this week because he needs to stay at home. So I’m writing this while he sleeps. I’m still not alone because my dog has had separation anxiety ever since the baby came and follows me around from place to place, his little toenails tapping on the floorboards behind me as I get up to make a cup of tea, fetch my laptop, etc. He will not abide me leaving him. It’s very annoying but since he is stressed I try not to let him know that he is annoying me.
I dreamt I lived in a little flat by myself. When I walked past the corner shop I saw the most perfect and beautiful bar of soap I’d ever seen. I can’t describe the soap to you because you had to be there. But anyway there was something wrong with my washing machine... I took a load of laundry in my arms and walked it down the road to the laundrette - I mean I tried to but, as often in dreams, I was incapable, and I dropped it all, sheets and underwear mostly, although there was also a wellington boot when I looked into the pavement ravine into which I’d dropped it. I decided not to care and walked home, let myself into my small red car, which, in reality, was stolen and scrapped while I was in Mexico and which I couldn’t drive anyway since I bought it before taking and failing my test - twice - but which, in the dream, was parked moderately badly on the side of the road. I leant forward into the airbag, which was inflated, and again, as often in dreams, I made myself come. When this was done and dusted I exited the car and went into my flat where there was a teenage girl perusing my wares. She was fingering everything in my flat, but I couldn’t blame her for wanting to, since my flat contained a revolving display of toothpastes and other sundries, and I’d left the door wide open.
I used to live on the corner of Brixton Water Lane and one day somebody had left the door open and a man had let himself in through the unlocked door, climbed the stairs, and walked into my bedroom where I was changing. I stood stock still and stared at the stranger who was in my bedroom, my torso half in and half out of a sweater. “Do you have any Rizla?” this man asked me. “No, sorry,” I said. And then he turned around and walked back down the stairs and I followed him and locked the door behind him and then texted my housemates to tell them that I’d nearly been murdered and could they lock the door behind them next time.
Another night I opened the front door to this same flat and a man was pissing in our doorway, which is to say that he was now pissing in my direction, onto my feet. “Oh my God,” I said. “Sorry,” the pissing man said, “I guess this isn’t your lucky day.”