Status

I have decided that self-perception is all. Shallow? Yes. Well I believe some of us have settled just how shallow I can be…(see here – )

For years I have referred to myself – whenever asked – as a lawyer.

When pushed – flute-playing, MA(Hons) ll.B Dip(l.P.), lawyer, mother-of-five, married, festival-goer.

Now there is a challenge to the listener.

Classical music playing. Glastonbury dance-tent stoned piss-head.

Arts graduate.

Stentorian pedantic lawyer.

Fecund Earth-Mother.

Still-dutiful.

What image do the descriptors I proffer conjure?

Does that image make space for – Pair wain? Failing school, deprived cooncil hoose kid? Sectarian band-playing tutor? D.H.lawrence apologist? Ambivalent advocate? Careless prophylactic profferer, non-contraceptive pill taker? Apathetic wife and occasional forgiven philanderer?

I am tired of the labels with which we adorn ourselves.

Tonight my regrets are ghosts haunting my present. Sulphurous. Stinking. I dream of choosing to teach… to write. To mother. To love. Those low status haunts which were just too middle-class bohemian for a child who was born to occupy the vocational. To become the practical. And the successful.

What sublime arrogance to presume we know who and what we are. Or that the effort of presuming has the slightest significance.

I have decided that I am a writer. And tonight, I am.