Back to Life…

So there we have it, the Fringe is over and I need to be normal mother again. What an odd feeling, I don’t have to get ready for the same gig night after night. I loved it but it is weird. I emailed all the contacts from Australia to Montreal that gave me business cards and thanked them for coming to see my show etc etc…

I am still a bit upside down and slightly annoyed that husband had taken over housekeeping duties before we left and had OVER washed our old duck down duvet THREE times in a boil wash as he was amazed at how much brown stuff kept coming out in the wash. That was of course the feather colours being heinously par-boiled that he mistook for dirt, so he kept boiling it in the machine till after 3 washes it ran clear. The feathers are now ‘putty’ and incapable of fluffiness and we need a new duvet!

I loved that old duvet, it had seen me through pregnancy, when it wrapped around me deliciously as I vomited up bile into a plastic bucket beside my bed for nine months, and it saw me through early baby stages when it cocooned Ashley’s wee chubby wriggling toddler body. I could wrap her up in it and leave her on the bed as I ran to have a much needed pee, it took her ages to get free from the big overwhelming duck cloud that it formed around her. She was a mini Houdini at two and that duvet worked wonders in stalling her when I needed it most. Other would call that child abuse, I called it ingenious!

It even moved home to my father in laws house where we stayed for a few months back in 1994 and that fateful day when the police arrived at that house to look for arms and weaponry, my faithful duvet covered my modesty when the police allowed me to finally cover my nakedness after they ordered me out of bed at 7am.

It became my security blanket when we quickly left that ‘gun house’ in late 1994 and at night in the new house I would lie snuggled up feeling safe in the familiar smell of my old duck down heaven.

Its now all crumpled and saggy, a bit like me really, its fresh plump appearance has given way to a flattened husk that serves no comfort and resembles something that promises nothing but barrenness. Like me.

So as my husband fingers his way through the plump lush fresh springy duvets in the shop tomorrow, it will only serve to remind me that this is what may happen in our relationship. He is searching for something that springs back at the touch, it will keep him cool in the summer and warm his flesh in the winter, it will be self cleaning and easy maintenance and will not wrap around his flesh when he least wants it, but will be sorted out by a mere flick over the bed.
That’s NOT me.

I am complicated, needy, offensive, argumentative, pleasing, passive, aggressive and need only to be told I am loved to make me smile.
Who knows maybe he will boil me to see what colour the water goes?