Taking a toothbrush to the grout inside the shower (we’ve lived here for eight years and I’ve had total faith in the bionic powers of Mr Clean and his ilk until now; this recent activity is a sure sign something is afoot), it did cross my mind, after I’d swatted the two flies that had been copulating on me first, and then on the bathroom mirror and listened to daughter’s humorous account of her first and hopefully only brush with morning detention (‘morning’ means 6.45am incidentally, and she was sentenced to this for committing the heinous crime of screwing a piece of paper into a small ball and flicking it at her friend during a lesson, who flicked it back and also got done: they didn’t even get a warning, which is standard practice, and I think it might have something to do with her maths teacher not being in the best of moods because she’s allegedly knocked up by a colleague whose credentials include habitually propping up a local bar until closing time and missing the train on a school trip. They phoned his mobile but couldn’t rouse him, I heard, and my sources are impeccable). Anyway, I was thinking, after the flies were dispatched and daughter laughed at (I had to sign a detention consent form and teased her endlessly by offering to tick the second option which said: “I do not consent to my child’s detention and request a meeting with the teacher involved, the head, board of governors, the peace envoy to Chechnya and the Dalai Lama”) that it would be nice to have someone do this chore for me, preferably one of those servile souls – invariably male – who used to advertise in the newspaper (and maybe the ones the internet left behind still do) their willingness to do a lady’s domestic bidding in her home, free of charge, in exchange for the opportunity to do it in their birthday suit. This is nothing more than an idle fantasy, of course, because I’ve always been suspicious of proposals like these. There’s no such thing as a free lunch after all and I couldn’t vouch for Mountain Man’s benign reaction on coming home to a strange man, naked save for a pinny, marigolds and a feather duster - could he bring his own feather duster? I don’t have one - gleaming taps, pristine tiles and scrubbed grout notwithstanding. But oh, we have lots of tiles and miles and miles of grout and now I’ve cleaned, say, a square metre, the rest looks rather dingy. So I’m tempted.

Daughter did Sudoki in detention. Contrary to the results of her extensive prior research, they weren’t allowed to eat or mess around in the internet. The teacher-in-charge was half asleep. Daughter and friend spent the last ten minutes flicking paper clips at each other.

Last night, I met a hero (I wish I could tell you who, how and why). Not a hero in the archetypal-mythological sense, not a hero as defined by the inflationary use of the term, e.g. sports hero (although, if you googled him you’d unfailingly find the word hero in the first five articles you came across and no doubt beyond; I didn’t read further), but: an ordinary man who has known great personal tragedy and shown great courage in the service of others.

He shook my hand, didn’t let go and thanked me - me! - for playing my part. He wasn’t as tall as I'd expected; his palms were warm and his smile infectious. He was generous, unobtrusively charismatic and called me “ma’am”. He asked me which part of Britain I came from (I managed to stutter a reply). He jocularly referred to himself as a colonist and I smiled and replied that I didn’t hold it against him, which just goes to show what rubbish you spout in the face of greatness. We talked while he clasped my hand in both of his and then he pulled me over the room in full view of everyone to introduce me to his wife and friends.

I’m still choked up. I’ve never felt such awe, and my faith in humanity has been reasserted.

I didn’t want to go to this function although my name was on the guest list. It doesn’t take much to dissuade a mild-to-moderate agoraphobic from leaving her comfort zone; a stubbed toe, minuscule change in temperature or the wind blowing from the wrong direction will suffice. And the day hadn’t got off to a promising start; I was feeling irritable, overwhelmed and beset with minor woes. In short; my “lady function”, as a correspondent so endearingly referred to it, was acting up, as the lady function tends to when it’s been overruled, suppressed, ignored and eschewed in favour of “getting things done” for a length of time.

Mountain Man was having none of it, and when I say that, I don’t mean he was being particularly assertive. Assertiveness has a 100% failure rate. He was being sly by addressing desire rather than fear. (We agoraphobics are a selfish bunch; dangle a juicy carrot in front of our inner hedonist and attention whore and we’re out of there like a shot.) Also: I can go almost anywhere as long as it’s with him or another "safe" person. That’s the way it works. (Other things work too, such as a daily 5mg dose of Cipralex, an antidepressant that is prescribed off-label for agoraphobia. I am proof of its efficacy.) If you’d like to know more, she describes it brilliantly. (Especially this: "I can't bear being the centre of attention. So obviously I'm looking forward to my wedding day! If I run away from the altar it'll look quite bad. I'll have to get pissed, or take loads of Valium." I know the feeling so well, if not pertaining to the same event. Sedation is infinitely preferable to getting plastered and it goes without saying that one NEVER implements both methods simultaneously.) All I can add to her observations is that agoraphobia is something only other people get until it happens to you.

“People say I come across as quite confident, which is weird. It's the one thing I'd like to be.”

They didn’t come in clogs but did drink millions of litres of beer, causing their male proponents to liberally piss against the walls, creating a right royal stench and more than enough work to keep the municipal cleaning department busy for the foreseeable future. I had my first appointment with the nouveau shrink on the day they played their last group fixture and rescheduled with alacrity. (All I know about meinen - potentiellen - neuen Psychotherapeuten is his name, that he’s a German/French bilingual of German nationality, speaks high German – but: “please speak to me in Swiss German if you wish,” he says - and softly spoken. I hope he’s not a pushover and his handshake is firm. He’s only six years older than me which will be interesting, although I’m fairly sure I’ve outgrown my need for a father figure.)

Just think: 200,000 they said (according to which news medium you consulted – why not 515,000, 476,987 or 599,989? - and I’m sure many were repeat offenders). 200,000 Dutch supporters in a city of just over 150,000 inhabitants. (A fantabulous figure – does Holland have that many inhabitants?) And it was the greatest, hippest, happiest, most colourful and peaceful party seen in Switzerland evah; second in volume only to Zürich’s annual street parade, which is so achingly trendy the police patrol on inline skates, bare-chested with shield-clad nipples. (The police make more arrests on 1^st of May demonstrations here, and just think: 200,000 England supporters and a substantial minority would have left the place burned and sacked as efficiently as any second-string tribe of pillaging Visigoths).

Then they went to Basel, bathed in the Rhine and carried on partying. And their luck turned: the brave Oranjes crashed out against Russia (coached by a Dutch); irredeemably, gloriously. (They wore black armbands. In the days before the match, tragedy struck; the wife of their defender Khalid Boulahrouz, seven or eight months pregnant, delivered a stillborn girl in Lausanne.) Their portly blond prince stared defeat in the face with good grace and a stiff upper lip while their pretty blond princess sat forlorn in the stands in her crumpled orange linen dress, forcing a smile. The multitudes sang a last song and downed another beer before boarding trains and catching planes. They will be sorely missed; especially the guy posing beneath the 17^th century Bernese arcade in a leopard-trimmed, orange velvet dressing gown and heels. Shame I can't find the photo.

I didn’t plan on taking a break from writing here. Thank you if you’re still with me – thank you for your patience and interest. I’ve been letting things settle and I’ve been laughing and crying and sighing and dancing. Breathing and reading and listening. I’ve been getting frustrated with a sodden month that echoed my mood perfectly and has suddenly, bang on time, turned into summer. The grass is high and the crickets raucous. The cherries are almost ripe. I’ve been taking my cue from them (click to enlarge):

Mountain Man and I, when we were without care and obligations (or so it seems in hindsight; I’m sure we had things to hyperventilate about back then), used to bake on Saturday nights, but only on the Saturday nights we spent at home, watching TV in the living room with wall to wall orange nylon shag pile (the only carpeted apartment we’ve ever lived in; the memory sets my teeth on edge). We’d bake throughout the night, stepping out onto the balcony at dawn, throwing the doors open wide to let the rich baking scents mingle with the sharp daybreak breeze coming off the water. We ate thick wedges of cake and buttered bread, warm and moist, and then tumbled into bed, locked limbs and slept until midday, just because we could. (I need space to sleep. I love the idea of sleeping entwined but it isn’t practical: entanglement is only good for falling asleep, and of course for sex, and sexual overture, and the tender thank you kiss on the nose tip and elsewhere after sex.)

I’ve been baking (quite astonishing for the woman whose seven-year-old daughter once told her class teacher “My mummy only bakes when it snows”). Baking cakes for little people; dainty fairy cakes with pink and blue icing and glacé cherries on top. For the grown ups, I’ve made a tiramisù laced with enough Amaretto to warm the soul through a millennium of winters. For us, I shall make a lemon meringue pie, to be enjoyed during the footie quarter final with a glass of Sauternes.

PS. Saturday, after sleeping on it: I didn't intend for the above to sound so fluffy. The fact is: it's been a pretty crappy month. I don't like to write about the negative here (although I sometimes succumb in frustration, and god knows how many times I've taken his name in vain plus an assortment of other choice words that make my daughter blush these past weeks). I don't think it's wrong to vent, but I do believe that giving the negative a written voice tends to reinforce it, at least in my case. And I have the good fortune to have a shrink at my disposal to work through stuff (god, I'm so eloquent) should I need to. And tomorrow, I turn a year older, hopefully wiser.

o xxx

I’m still here. I’m sorry I haven’t updated. Uncertainty and change – shifting sands of myriad subtle and less subtle transitions - have rendered me tongue-tied. Outwardly barren and passive, I am inwardly fecund and restless. I read those of you who let me on my rss reader and find myself curiously reticent, unwilling to trespass, envious of your prolificacy. I crave normality when and wherever it offers itself: wakefulness on an early spring morning, dawn choruses, the sun’s nascent rays illuminating the oleander, a lush overgrown garden from the previous week’s abundant rainfall, the sound of droplets separated from a curtain of warm rain, the scent of trapped moisture evaporating. Being spooned – my thigh held securely between his, my body held by his flesh, muscle and will, wistfully wishing he could hold my mind – while he thumbs over my left nipple like a worry bead.

For now, this is what I settle for.

The unlovelier aspects of cat-keepership include:

Discovering the first flea of the season on your freshly laundered, air-dried white sheets. Round them up (the cats, not the fleas), liberally apply Frontline Spot On (Ad US. Vet.) and with a prayer and crossed fingers, it will be the last.

Realising upon awaking that your two-legged bed mate has already left for work and the boy-cat has plonked himself down on his pillow and wiped his bottom on it. It is directly in front of your nose.

The little love tokens they thoughtfully deposit in the hallway for you to tread in en route to the bathroom in the dark. It’s as if they’re saying “Feeling peckish? I’ll save you a trip to the fridge! Here! Have a squashed toad! Or would you like half of my disembowelled dormouse?” (When you dispose of the mice, dor- or other, whatever you do DO NOT fling them over the hedge by their tails – the tail will snap off, you will squeal loudly and look a right tit.) Ask Mountain Man to explain the difference between a frog and a toad (remember, I am the woman who for years failed to recognise that the neighbourhood cockerel was in fact a gander).

“Erm… a toad is larger, uglier and has warts,” he says. (I am disappointed – I was expecting a scientific treatise.)

Finishing off the wretched creatures they lost interest in and left convulsing in death throes. Phone Mountain Man.

“Throw it on the compost.”

“No! The cat will get it back, or another cat, or it will be eaten alive by worms!”

“Hit it with a shovel, then.”

So I do, and I close my eyes a split second before the shovel makes contact and miss. Repeat.

And then there was the time when a Canary was sitting in the apple tree, and two of the cats were stalking it from different directions. “Do something!” I screeched at Mountain Man. He chased the cats away and chirped away at the Canary, who chirped cheerily back at him. They chatted a while and Mountain Man persuaded the Canary to hop into a Pampers box and phoned the Bird Man. (Mountain Man knows all the relevant people and all the relevant people know him – he’s that kind of guy and we live in that kind of place.)

The Bird Man collected the Canary – an escape artist of some notoriety – and returned it to its owners. A week later it was back again.

Lessons I either learned this week or am attempting to learn eventually (the hard way) or will never learn.

Not to buy Klorane wax strips because your usual brand isn’t in stock. They’re crap. The strip comes off, the wax remains on your leg and you spend twenty minutes, a bag of cotton wool balls, half a bottle of oil and a protracted swearing session removing it. Some of your skin will come off, too. Their only redeeming feature is that they save exfoliating.

Applying red toenail varnish over existing chipped coats because you’re too lazy to strip and apply a fresh coat. This is a reprehensible, unforgivable act of ill-breeding and sluttery and you know it and will pay the price (see above; substitute oil with nail varnish remover). But you just won’t learn, will you? Slut!

Eating those little savoury puff pastry goodies at the fortnightly wine & slander evening with your best friend. You know refined wheat makes you bloat and feel teary and sensitive to touch. It obviously doesn’t make you feel ill enough. And no – it’s NOT the wine.

I live in a country where 100,000 signatures can force a referendum on any law, necessitating a change in the constitution if passed by the electorate (me and around 6,500,000 others give or take a few). The Swiss are generally quite enthusiastic about exercising this right – a right we are proud of and believe is unique throughout the democratic world. Simplified, it ensures we can have our say on a wide range of subjects at federal, cantonal and municipal level, such as stem cell research (approved), abolishing the armed forces (almost approved), assisted euthanasia (legal in Canton Zürich, not sure about elsewhere), same sex partnerships (approved), joining the EU (not approved), universal Sunday shopping (not approved), the colour of next year’s dog licence (blue). Parliament can introduce any law it pleases; if we, the citizens, don’t like it, it ain’t gonna happen.

This fine and sunny morning, I am tempted to start collecting signatures that will prohibit Swiss radio (all stations) from playing James Blunt followed by Phil Collins (yes, I know he lives in Geneva, yes, I know he has a sprog by a Swiss woman, no, I do not fucking care). If I have my way, the death penalty will be reinstated for playing James Blunt (who lives in fucking Martigny Verbier – the preferred home-from-home of boorish British tax exiles, i.e. ex-Sandhurst warblers and hedge fund managers, besides a smattering of assorted Hooray Henries who have been priced out of Kensington and Chelsea), followed by Phil Collins followed by Shania Twat. For playing them at all, in fact, and for uttering their names and whistling their execrable tunes.

At least they can’t vote.

Rejection. I think we’ve all known rejection - even the brightest, strongest, most illustrious and beautiful of us has known rejection in some form or other. It’s not exactly uncharted territory, and if I’m writing about it here, it’s because I write, I think, to touch and be touched, and my words might resonate with you in some way. But I’m writing about it primarily, I think, so I don’t forget how it feels in its immediacy and how it cuts to the quick, but also because I believe that rejection should be accepted with grace and dignity and expressing myself openly and self-indulgently here, in my space, will help me achieve that.

 For several years, I was in a relationship that never really got off the ground. One of the reasons for this was geographical distance and the need to rely on the emotionally stunted paths of cyber interaction and very occasional and intense meetings to explore and deepen the relationship. (He could never phone or take phone calls from me; that would be regarded as “inappropriate”, he said.) Another reason was justified fear for the well-being of the people who would have been drawn into our entanglement. We were both loath to plunge into that maelstrom, which is understandable. Our perspectives though were entirely different; I grew up with a parent and a step-parent who were at each other’s throats for most of their marriage. The awfulness compounded like a vile kind of interest and it was a blessing, a relief, pure peace when they split up. If you've been reading for any length of time you'll know that my marriage is in no shape or form comparable - I married my best friend and our relationship is, for the largest part, harmonious. Nevertheless, I do not believe that being unfulfilled is a state that must be borne lifelong with saint-like equanimity.

I would have caused his career, home and family to implode, he said. (Maybe I shall ask him to clarify the “career” part at some point, because it doesn’t figure right now – he’s not a member of the clergy, an MP for the Chastity Party or a pillar of society or similar to my knowledge, unless he’s been leading me a merry dance all these years.) He made me sound like an infectious disease that, allowed to spread unchecked, would burn everything up, fever-like, in its path. Throughout the years, he fed me little titbits of what I thought was love, tokens of affection that were in reality just crumbs from his table. I did pine, oh god how I pined. The crumbs couldn’t sustain me, and they certainly couldn’t keep me in the manner to which I’d have wished to become accustomed. I was proud. I thought I was at fault. I tried harder, hoped and wished even more, to no avail. If I’m angry now, my anger is directed towards myself. If there is a lesson I have learned, it is that I shall never give of myself so cheaply again. And I also learned that furtive, clandestine affairs are not for me (I do not condemn people who have and can handle affairs - good for them if it gives them what they need - it’s just not my way). And that people who choose the “protecting others” defence are more often than not first and foremost interested in protecting themselves. I was his delicious dirty little secret, offset by the purity of his home life. It was never his intention to offer me more. This was implied, repeatedly, but I was only half-listening, colouring in the blurred grey outlines with my own vibrant palette. Self-delusion is a comfortably padded retreat from the mundane and hope reigns eternal. He never had the balls to tell me, straight out, until yesterday, after more than a little prompting from me.

There I went, all that time, dream-like, trusting, love-drunken and blind. It wasn’t a pretty sight. In the end, I just wasn’t special enough. It wasn’t for want of wishing, trying or hoping, and I think that I shall wish, hope and try again, because only a life lived to the full is a life lived well. This is my response, the only response that makes sense to me.

Sunday is Mother's Day. It’s also a three-day weekend in honour of Whitsuntide. Each year, Swiss TV polls the man and woman in the street to ascertain whether he/she knows what Whitsuntide means. 99% of the polled invariably do not. Count me in. None of them seem to be averse to an extra day off work, though. This is one of the aspects of life in Switzerland that I love; the entrenched and unapologetic sense of cultural identity. The country has its roots in Christian tradition and culture - two of its UNESCO World Heritage Sites are monasteries - and whether I am a believer or not (not really) or agree with the tenets of the Christian faith or not (I do with most of them), I get the holiday. That’s what I call civilised.

Both Mother’s Day and Whitsuntide are pretty much non-events chez O, but the little man’s teacher - herself a boy-mother - ensures that we acknowledge the first befittingly: the little man brings me a card. Because Sunday is far, far distant, he presents it to me three days early.

It is red. He has drawn a Union Jack and a Swiss flag on the front, flanking a large white heart pierced by a wonky but sharp arrow.

Inside, there are several multicoloured hearts, both pierced and unpierced.

He has written, in fabulously creative German, the following:

Libe [sic] Mama

And I'll continue in English, because he surpasses himself:

You can make me spaghetti and then you can read the newspaper.

(Helpfully illustrated with drawings of a plate heaving with spaghetti and an open newspaper.)

Love,

[your adoring son]

We have too many cats in our bedroom, in the chair, on our bed; claiming space and nocturnal attention as a birthright with uninhibited instincts and lithe bodies dreaming, twitching, flexing, snoring.

The matriarch won’t use the cat flap; she’s too dignified. She leaps onto the log pile, from there traverses the rose trellis to the windowsill and paws gracefully over the blinds until one of us awakes (or, more likely than not, tires of pretending not to be awake), gets up and lets her in. Sometimes the youngsters mimic her, badly and clumsily, but we are sleep-drunken and not alert enough to spot the difference and ignore. Last night, one of them roused us both, and he got up and then I got up and it was early dawn and the birdsong was just beginning.

When I returned from the bathroom he was sitting there, naked on the edge of the bed, teasing the boy-cat with his big toe. We said hi and I, high on too many espressos that accompanied the champagne and litres of water, displaced cat No. 2 - not because she was in the way, but because I was feeling territorial and didn’t want onlookers, even feline ones - and folded myself into his lap so we could swap stories. He’d come home late; I’d come home even later. So I sat there curled into his warmth, listening to the dawn chorus, feeling tiny, yielding, soft and delicate. He cupped a breast with one hand and let his other rest, calmly investigative and quite deliciously, between my thighs.

For the first time in weeks, I didn’t think. I just felt. The textures, tastes and scents of skin-on-skin, his breath on my throat, my heartbeat in his palm. It was peace. I didn’t want to unfold.

aag encapsulates it beautifully here. She writes:

“This is where I lose all sense of understanding toward the people who don’t adore sex. Not liking intercourse? Sure, I can see that. Being weirded out by oral? I get it. Not really desiring orgasms? It’s a stretch, but I can grasp that concept.

But who doesn’t love to be pressed against warm naked skin?”