Mark is in search of himself. That much should be clear to all of you followers of this blog (incidentally welcome to new follower llamacroft aka Sarah Eaton whose bike I ride daily and whose blog is here:
http://saraheatonwriter.wordpress.com/2014/06/12/what-are-you-wearing-to-britmums-live-erm-clothes/
and that the rest of us are in search of a way to make sense of what Mark is doing. Even referring to Mark is problematic these days as Mark prefers to be known as Someone Else and wishes to have an ‘s’ in front of the pronoun ‘he’, both of which I decline to do. This can lead to some rather asymmetrical conversations, like this:
Caller: Is Amanda there?
Me: Sorry, no. Mark isn’t here.
Caller: When will she be back?
Me: He’ll be back in an hour.
Alternatively I could say, he’ll be back in a few years or possibly not at all. Who can say? Oo, look – I’ve just found a purple button? I wonder if that’ll make this post any easier to write?
People often (oo, that’s a different shade!) ask me how I’m doing, to which my standard response is ‘How long have you got?’ The unfair thing about these situations is that it’s the one doing the changing (Mark has just pointed out that I am now writing purple prose) who gets all the attention. People queue up to fling scarves and dresses at him; they come round on purpose to give him nail polish and advise him on jewellery, and I start to think ‘Where’s my dress? Why does no-one give me any stuff?’ To do Mark justice (he is now asking me to mention how great it is that he doesn’t wear tracksuits any more. OK. It’s great that he doesn’t wear tracksuits any more.) As I said, to do him justice he is concerned on my behalf that I don’t get enough support or attention. It’s just that I feel I’m living in this asymmetrical world where nothing matches up, and I need a metaphor to describe it. I’m not happy unless I have a metaphor – whereas Mark isn’t happy unless he has a paradigm. Buddy, can you spare a paradigm?
Kirk out
Argh, it’s gone all black again…
Sarada Gray 