On What Matters
Entry by: JHK
12th January 2017
Ma,
The poisonous hissing rattle of cars and bikes fuming the city and the constant chirp-chirruping of stupid birds kept me up last night. Nobody here knows when to sleep. Day-bright street lights pierce through my plastic shutters. Jungle heat beats up off the pavements and stills the low air. Sickly sweet marijuana smells drift in through the windows and the cracks around the door, along with the cackling shrieks of half-men and their would-be women.
Even the animals are unnatural. Silky foxes come out in the day now, not just at night, emboldened by the absence of predators and fat from the abundance of easy food. Songbirds sing through the night, unadapted to electric bulbs. All the dogs are round, low things with smushed faces and drooping tongues. No elegant labs and collies like our Max and dear old Winnie! And the few labradors I do see are glum and downtrodden. Because where can they roam? Where’s the verdant countryside and rolling hills, the crystal brooks and peaty woods? Where are the sheep to chase?
Work is okay. At least in my little corner of government things are quite calm. The hours are good, although I don’t have anything much to do with my evenings except for a Friday or sometimes Thursday (if he can get away) when Ned comes up for the weekend or I go down to see him. I’m not looking forward to when he has to go away again. It’s a pity you haven’t met him, he’s very kind and generous and when he looks you in the eye you know he means every bit of what he’s saying. I know it’s only been a few months but if he asked me I think I’d say yes! Because sometimes you just know, don’t you, that’s what you and Dad always say.
My housemate hasn’t been very nice to me recently so I’m thinking of moving out. I hardly see her to be honest but recently she’s been bringing boys home during the week and drinking and joking with them loudly into the early hours. The other day to I went to ask them to be quiet and it was gone two a.m. and they just laughed at me and the boy teased me and called me a country lass. But - why’s it even bad to be from the countryside?
Everyone round here seems to think is the only way to live in this horrible city is to make it even more horrible by charging about the place nineteen-to-the-dozen with drinking and drugs and always having some thing or a place to be and never sleeping or thinking or taking time to breathe in-and-out...
Anyway!
Sorry for that, Ma. I think this place is getting to me a bit!
Hugs and kisses,
Jen xx
*
Ma,
I sent a survey around at work that I’ve been writing for a few weeks now but nobody has replied so far. On Wednesday I sent a chaser email politely drawing everybody’s attention to the deadline which was today, Friday, at 5pm and mentioning how I could understand that it might not have been at the top of everybody’s priority list, but reminding them how it would be a really good basis on which to better understand different people’s unique experiences of the department and re-align our activities to better attract and retain our number one resource, our people, that is to say them, going forward, but I still didn’t get any replies.
I checked with the IT department as well because I thought, I don’t know, maybe I’ve got the distribution list title entered incorrectly or maybe I need special permissions - there are a lot of email addresses on that list and some places they don’t like everyone having access to them, I think because of spam which really did clog up a lot of companies’ servers in the ‘90s.
So I went down to IT and spoke to them and they checked and said, nope, it all worked fine, that first email was sent to 977 people, and the chaser email was sent to 976. And I said, why only 976 on the chaser? And they said, oh, haven’t you heard? A guy died. Dick Allen. Heart attack on Monday. Just dropped dead. And I thought, and this is terrible, I thought, well, at least somebody’s having a worse week than I am! I guess it put things into perspective.
It reminded me of what you always say, ma - that I need to focus on what matters. Everything else is just rubbish that you can throw away. And I suppose that cheered me up.
Sorry for the short one - I’m on the train down to see Ned. Miss you!
Hugs and kisses,
Jen xx
*
Ma,
Sorry I haven’t had much time to write recently! Things have been kind of busy - good busy, though. It turns out there’s a monthly drinking society at work, and I’ve become quite the regular attendee! And I’m (finally) about to move out of my flat - a girl from work is moving to Canada for the year so she advertised her room to let on facebook, she just lives with this one other boy but I met him briefly at drinks and he seemed fine - anyway, no-one on the planet can be worse than stupid Susan. Good riddance!
Ned and I went away last weekend to Girona in Spain. It was so lovely! The old town is a warren of winding alleys, all sesame-coloured brick and wrought-iron balconies. And the food was so exotic - they only serve tapas, which is lots of teeny-tiny dishes and you’re meant to eat it slowly while you’re drinking, only Ned got annoyed and said we were drinking too much on an empty stomach, so we just ordered about fifteen tapas all at once! The newer part of town is trendy, a bit too trendy perhaps from the smell of drugs everywhere, but the ice-cream was gorgeous.
And when we were stood on this pretty little stone bridge looking out along the river and the sun was setting behind us I really thought he might propose, and I was all ready to say yes! But instead we just stood there and watched the dappled reflection on the sun on the water. I suppose I might just have to pluck up the courage one day!
Hugs and kisses,
Jen xx
*
Ma,
Things haven’t been so good these past few weeks.
Ned had to go away again, for six months this time they think.
That’s not the worst thing though. This new flat I’m in is in the middle of a social housing area or whatever you’re meant to call them these days - a council estate. There are all sorts of people around all the time, dodgy people, ne’er-do-wells you’d call them. There’s a man on the corner I can see from my window, in baggy adidas tracksuits and crisp white trainers and big dark sunglasses. People drive up in their cars and he leans over and gives them something and they give him something and then they go. Sometimes at night the hoot their horns if he’s not outside. I think he’s a drug dealer. Above us there’s a couple who argue all the time and stomp around, and sometimes their baby cries and I hear them telling it to shut up. The couple on the ground floor have a dog in their yard and I’m sure it’s an illegal breed, and it barks whenever a car drives past to the man who sells drugs on the corner.
The man in the flat next to ours coughs all the time. He room joins on to mine. It reminds me of when you were sick. I jerk awake and think I’m at home when I used to wake up in the night, and hear you coughing, until -
But that’s not the worst thing, either. The worst thing is my new flatmate. I think he might be a psycho. He had a girl who used to come over, but she doesn’t come anymore. She seemed nice. Probably they just broke up, but sometimes I think - what if he killed her? One week she was there, and then... I suppose he doesn’t care. When I think of how I’d feel if Ned and I broke up… I’d be a mess. But he just seems to carry on. Every night he masturbates furiously. He thinks he’s being quiet but I can hear it, I know his routine, the rustle of him hastily grabbing some toilet roll, the clunk of his bedroom door carefully closed, the click of lid of the moisturiser bottle, the tip-tap of his web-searching fingers, gentle moaning from his laptop speakers - quiet, but not that quiet - and gradually, gradually, that gentle rhythmic greasy sound as hand works shaft, faster and faster until - big sigh - he reaches his crisis, slap of sperm on chest, a grunt of satifaction. And in the flat next door, the man keeps coughing.
But what I really can’t stand is how it shows he doesn’t care. Why doesn’t he care! How he can just carry on in this cesspit, this hell-on-earth, this den of sin and misery and betrayal, oblivious to it all? Why doesn’t he acknowledge it? Why doesn’t it bother him - why can’t he see that it’s not okay? And he just trundles on like nothing’s happening, like it’s all fine, like there isn’t a killer dog downstairs and an abusive family living above us and a man dying next door. It’s not fine, I want to shout it. IT’S NOT FINE!
Instead I just keep my distance. I listen for doors around the house to make sure we don’t end up in the same room at the same time. His alarm is always at 7.40, so I get up twenty minutes earlier and shower and then I make my breakfast while he’s in the shower, and then I eat it in my room while he eats his breakfast and then I leave straight after him. Sometimes it means I’m late for work but at least I don’t have to face him. In the evenings usually I’m back earlier and so I just microwave my tea and take a bottle of wine upstairs into my room quickly before he’s back. But the worst is if he gets home before me and he’s sitting eating in the kitchen when I come in. Then I have to look at him and speak to him, usually I say something about work and then escape to my room and lock the door and push the chest of drawers in front of it because what matters is my safety, he could be a rapist and a murderer after all, and I can’t get the sound of him masturbating out of my head, his hand greasily working his cock every night, and when I hear it I cuddle down in my duvet and hold onto a pillow and clutching it imagine it’s Ned and the cars hoot and the dog barks and the man coughs to death in the room next door.
*
Ma,
This is going to be my last letter. I’ve come home. Dad’s looking after me now. He said that, after my little breakdown, it’s time for me to focus on what matters. To focus on me. Not on you, not on the past.
It’s been almost four years since you died. I can’t believe it. I’ll never stop loving you, and I’ll never stop missing you. But now I’ve got to focus on what matters. You can’t look after me any more.
Ned will be back soon. He’s going to move jobs to be nearby, and he won’t have to go again. I think we can be happy together.
I love you Ma. Bye.
Jen xx
The poisonous hissing rattle of cars and bikes fuming the city and the constant chirp-chirruping of stupid birds kept me up last night. Nobody here knows when to sleep. Day-bright street lights pierce through my plastic shutters. Jungle heat beats up off the pavements and stills the low air. Sickly sweet marijuana smells drift in through the windows and the cracks around the door, along with the cackling shrieks of half-men and their would-be women.
Even the animals are unnatural. Silky foxes come out in the day now, not just at night, emboldened by the absence of predators and fat from the abundance of easy food. Songbirds sing through the night, unadapted to electric bulbs. All the dogs are round, low things with smushed faces and drooping tongues. No elegant labs and collies like our Max and dear old Winnie! And the few labradors I do see are glum and downtrodden. Because where can they roam? Where’s the verdant countryside and rolling hills, the crystal brooks and peaty woods? Where are the sheep to chase?
Work is okay. At least in my little corner of government things are quite calm. The hours are good, although I don’t have anything much to do with my evenings except for a Friday or sometimes Thursday (if he can get away) when Ned comes up for the weekend or I go down to see him. I’m not looking forward to when he has to go away again. It’s a pity you haven’t met him, he’s very kind and generous and when he looks you in the eye you know he means every bit of what he’s saying. I know it’s only been a few months but if he asked me I think I’d say yes! Because sometimes you just know, don’t you, that’s what you and Dad always say.
My housemate hasn’t been very nice to me recently so I’m thinking of moving out. I hardly see her to be honest but recently she’s been bringing boys home during the week and drinking and joking with them loudly into the early hours. The other day to I went to ask them to be quiet and it was gone two a.m. and they just laughed at me and the boy teased me and called me a country lass. But - why’s it even bad to be from the countryside?
Everyone round here seems to think is the only way to live in this horrible city is to make it even more horrible by charging about the place nineteen-to-the-dozen with drinking and drugs and always having some thing or a place to be and never sleeping or thinking or taking time to breathe in-and-out...
Anyway!
Sorry for that, Ma. I think this place is getting to me a bit!
Hugs and kisses,
Jen xx
*
Ma,
I sent a survey around at work that I’ve been writing for a few weeks now but nobody has replied so far. On Wednesday I sent a chaser email politely drawing everybody’s attention to the deadline which was today, Friday, at 5pm and mentioning how I could understand that it might not have been at the top of everybody’s priority list, but reminding them how it would be a really good basis on which to better understand different people’s unique experiences of the department and re-align our activities to better attract and retain our number one resource, our people, that is to say them, going forward, but I still didn’t get any replies.
I checked with the IT department as well because I thought, I don’t know, maybe I’ve got the distribution list title entered incorrectly or maybe I need special permissions - there are a lot of email addresses on that list and some places they don’t like everyone having access to them, I think because of spam which really did clog up a lot of companies’ servers in the ‘90s.
So I went down to IT and spoke to them and they checked and said, nope, it all worked fine, that first email was sent to 977 people, and the chaser email was sent to 976. And I said, why only 976 on the chaser? And they said, oh, haven’t you heard? A guy died. Dick Allen. Heart attack on Monday. Just dropped dead. And I thought, and this is terrible, I thought, well, at least somebody’s having a worse week than I am! I guess it put things into perspective.
It reminded me of what you always say, ma - that I need to focus on what matters. Everything else is just rubbish that you can throw away. And I suppose that cheered me up.
Sorry for the short one - I’m on the train down to see Ned. Miss you!
Hugs and kisses,
Jen xx
*
Ma,
Sorry I haven’t had much time to write recently! Things have been kind of busy - good busy, though. It turns out there’s a monthly drinking society at work, and I’ve become quite the regular attendee! And I’m (finally) about to move out of my flat - a girl from work is moving to Canada for the year so she advertised her room to let on facebook, she just lives with this one other boy but I met him briefly at drinks and he seemed fine - anyway, no-one on the planet can be worse than stupid Susan. Good riddance!
Ned and I went away last weekend to Girona in Spain. It was so lovely! The old town is a warren of winding alleys, all sesame-coloured brick and wrought-iron balconies. And the food was so exotic - they only serve tapas, which is lots of teeny-tiny dishes and you’re meant to eat it slowly while you’re drinking, only Ned got annoyed and said we were drinking too much on an empty stomach, so we just ordered about fifteen tapas all at once! The newer part of town is trendy, a bit too trendy perhaps from the smell of drugs everywhere, but the ice-cream was gorgeous.
And when we were stood on this pretty little stone bridge looking out along the river and the sun was setting behind us I really thought he might propose, and I was all ready to say yes! But instead we just stood there and watched the dappled reflection on the sun on the water. I suppose I might just have to pluck up the courage one day!
Hugs and kisses,
Jen xx
*
Ma,
Things haven’t been so good these past few weeks.
Ned had to go away again, for six months this time they think.
That’s not the worst thing though. This new flat I’m in is in the middle of a social housing area or whatever you’re meant to call them these days - a council estate. There are all sorts of people around all the time, dodgy people, ne’er-do-wells you’d call them. There’s a man on the corner I can see from my window, in baggy adidas tracksuits and crisp white trainers and big dark sunglasses. People drive up in their cars and he leans over and gives them something and they give him something and then they go. Sometimes at night the hoot their horns if he’s not outside. I think he’s a drug dealer. Above us there’s a couple who argue all the time and stomp around, and sometimes their baby cries and I hear them telling it to shut up. The couple on the ground floor have a dog in their yard and I’m sure it’s an illegal breed, and it barks whenever a car drives past to the man who sells drugs on the corner.
The man in the flat next to ours coughs all the time. He room joins on to mine. It reminds me of when you were sick. I jerk awake and think I’m at home when I used to wake up in the night, and hear you coughing, until -
But that’s not the worst thing, either. The worst thing is my new flatmate. I think he might be a psycho. He had a girl who used to come over, but she doesn’t come anymore. She seemed nice. Probably they just broke up, but sometimes I think - what if he killed her? One week she was there, and then... I suppose he doesn’t care. When I think of how I’d feel if Ned and I broke up… I’d be a mess. But he just seems to carry on. Every night he masturbates furiously. He thinks he’s being quiet but I can hear it, I know his routine, the rustle of him hastily grabbing some toilet roll, the clunk of his bedroom door carefully closed, the click of lid of the moisturiser bottle, the tip-tap of his web-searching fingers, gentle moaning from his laptop speakers - quiet, but not that quiet - and gradually, gradually, that gentle rhythmic greasy sound as hand works shaft, faster and faster until - big sigh - he reaches his crisis, slap of sperm on chest, a grunt of satifaction. And in the flat next door, the man keeps coughing.
But what I really can’t stand is how it shows he doesn’t care. Why doesn’t he care! How he can just carry on in this cesspit, this hell-on-earth, this den of sin and misery and betrayal, oblivious to it all? Why doesn’t he acknowledge it? Why doesn’t it bother him - why can’t he see that it’s not okay? And he just trundles on like nothing’s happening, like it’s all fine, like there isn’t a killer dog downstairs and an abusive family living above us and a man dying next door. It’s not fine, I want to shout it. IT’S NOT FINE!
Instead I just keep my distance. I listen for doors around the house to make sure we don’t end up in the same room at the same time. His alarm is always at 7.40, so I get up twenty minutes earlier and shower and then I make my breakfast while he’s in the shower, and then I eat it in my room while he eats his breakfast and then I leave straight after him. Sometimes it means I’m late for work but at least I don’t have to face him. In the evenings usually I’m back earlier and so I just microwave my tea and take a bottle of wine upstairs into my room quickly before he’s back. But the worst is if he gets home before me and he’s sitting eating in the kitchen when I come in. Then I have to look at him and speak to him, usually I say something about work and then escape to my room and lock the door and push the chest of drawers in front of it because what matters is my safety, he could be a rapist and a murderer after all, and I can’t get the sound of him masturbating out of my head, his hand greasily working his cock every night, and when I hear it I cuddle down in my duvet and hold onto a pillow and clutching it imagine it’s Ned and the cars hoot and the dog barks and the man coughs to death in the room next door.
*
Ma,
This is going to be my last letter. I’ve come home. Dad’s looking after me now. He said that, after my little breakdown, it’s time for me to focus on what matters. To focus on me. Not on you, not on the past.
It’s been almost four years since you died. I can’t believe it. I’ll never stop loving you, and I’ll never stop missing you. But now I’ve got to focus on what matters. You can’t look after me any more.
Ned will be back soon. He’s going to move jobs to be nearby, and he won’t have to go again. I think we can be happy together.
I love you Ma. Bye.
Jen xx
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