Me. You. a Diary Read online

  Dawn French

  * * *

  ME • YOU

  A DIARY

  Loads of help from Abi Thomas

  Illustrations by Chris Burke

  Contents

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  YOU

  JANUARY

  FEBRUARY

  SPRING

  MARCH

  APRIL

  MAY

  SUMMER

  JUNE

  JULY

  AUGUST

  AUTUMN

  SEPTEMBER

  OCTOBER

  NOVEMBER

  DECEMBER

  WINTER

  FOLLOW PENGUIN

  For the Mighty BF

  (BOOTS)

  Any references to ‘writing in this book’ refer to the original printed version. Readers should write on a separate piece of paper or notebook in these instances.

  Take a photo of yourself. It’s best if it’s a head-and-shoulders shot, but anything will do.

  1. Age: __________________________________________

  2. Full name: _____________________________________

  3. Photo was taken (when?): _________________________

  4. Photo was taken (where?): ________________________

  5. State of mind when photo was taken: ________________

  ________________________________________________

  6. Best thing about that day: _________________________

  ________________________________________________

  7. Thing I like most in this photo: _____________________

  ________________________________________________

  ________________________________________________

  8. Thing I like least in this photo: _____________________

  ________________________________________________

  ________________________________________________

  9.Three words to describe who I see in this photo: _______

  ________________________________________________

  ________________________________________________

  ________________________________________________

  .................................................................................................

  JANUARY

  Look, the fact is we all have to START SOMEWHERE. Don’t know about you, but I’m a bit tired after the clamour and busy-ness of Christmas, but in a couple of minutes I won’t be, I’ll be ready to wake up the year and get going. I know the dark mornings don’t help. Why do they feel so ungodly? Is it that we feel like we’re getting up in the middle of the night when we should still be curled up? I try to combat those odd sluggish, grumpy sensations by imagining I am stealing some extra night time to add to my day, a bit like I used to as a very young person when a night of fun ended with a slightly wobbly walk home in the gloamy low light of just before sunrise. Alongside the confidence of residual tipsiness was the thrill of being sexily nocturnal. Part cat, part lush, part party. Sort of Italian or French or whoever it is that staggers home in heels and a well-cut mac with make-up in interesting disarray. Moody, complicated, enigmatic and continental. Recently sexed, and slightly slovenly.

  Nothing was further from the truth of course. I would more likely be in Doc Martens and denim overalls, with badly dyed purple punk hair, feeling vomity and regretful of whatever clumsy fumble I’d just escaped from with whichever silly insensitive stinky boy was game.

  Anyhoo, you know what I mean. It’s possible to reframe the grim, dark morning as a glamorous remnant of night. In fact, it’s possible to realign almost any kind of thinking if you really want to. I have experimented with this very thing a few times in my life, and I have never once regretted it. It’s when you decide to step to the side of your life for a moment to have a good look at it, almost like pulling in to a lay-by on a busy road. I try to give my eyes and ears and brain a few minutes off from the fast flow of life traffic and have a pit stop.

  Sometimes, if you’re lucky, it’s blindingly obvious what changes need to happen if you can bring yourself to be brutally honest. Sometimes, of course, it’s not, because you’re either not ready to make any changes or don’t want to or maybe even don’t see them at all. The latter is normally the clearest sign of denial for me! On the lucky occasions that it’s clear as day, I have to consciously decide to alter my mindset, usually about something I have long-held beliefs attached to. I can be remarkably stubborn, because, of course, it’s much easier to carry on ploughing the same old familiar furrow, isn’t it? Even if it’s not straight and yields nothing.

  A couple of years ago I came across a secret weapon that I keep in my arsenal, ready for use at a moment’s notice if I sense that I am bedding down into the wrong mindset. It’s this, a tiny, mighty poem by the American poet Jane Hirshfield:

  ‘I moved my chair into sun

  I sat in the sun

  The way hunger is moved when called fasting.’

  There. That’s it. Boom. When I first read it, a depth charge went off inside me. The feeling you have when deep is calling to deep. When something is undeniably, universally true. Totally authentic. I had a seismic, visceral reaction somewhere in my limbic system, and I knew that I would certainly never forget it. Mainly because I needed it to help me right some tilted things back into position, things that had gone a bit skewy. I needed to move my ‘chair’ into sun, and I needed to sit there and notice the difference. Needed to let the sunlight drench me and realize what it’s like to move your thinking, to reframe and reclaim your attitude, your reaction, your control. It’s powerful stuff and, for me, it really works.

  January is good for this. With last year firmly behind us we can properly resolve to make this year a blummin’ good one. When I say good, I don’t mean that I will measure the success of it by whether or not I have swum with dolphins or had a meaningful tattoo or learnt Chinese. I’m sure it’s lovely to do any of those things, but I will be very happy with some smaller, more attainable achievements. If I am a degree more tolerant perhaps, or if I can mend a fractured friendship or tell a long-held truth or forgive that annoying twot, it would be big for me. I can only do those things, though, if I ACTIVELY change my thinking.

  I know I can.

  Will I?

  The way to succeed at making change is, I suspect, to do it in incrementally small phases, so that it’s possible and not too overwhelming. We all know how our good intentions positively kick us off at the beginning of the year. I can’t count the amount of diaries I have crammed full with entries in January, that then fizzle out as the other months pile in. One of my teenage diaries has fulsome fizzing reports of every single conversation, thought and feeling about every friend, every crush, every journey, every meal, every argument, every family commitment, every appointment until mid-March, when the entry on March 18th simply reads,

  ‘Washed hair.’

  … Which is an achievement of sorts, I suppose, and better than ‘didn’t wash hair’, but still … I don’t want the bigness of the year ahead to upend me, or you, so I am reminding us both to go steady and think of it all in bite-size chunks. One thing at a time.

  You have probably, in the last few weeks, been cajoled into making some resolutions. OH LORD, I HATE RESOLUTIONS. The giant dread of certain failure that accompanies them unlocks a fearful guilt in me. Not only do I predict that I won’t be capable of sticking to the said resolution, but I am reminded of the tsunami of regret I have about all the previous let-downs. It’s a spiral of disappointment.

  So.

  I’m not going to make resolutions.

  BUT.

  I AM going to have a small, manageable list of intentions in my back pocket. Something I may well look back at when the end of the year comes, just to have a sneak
y peek at and consider whether I have gone anywhere near progress. If I haven’t, so be it, I’m not going to beat myself up. I will simply know that they were in my thoughts, and that will just have to be good enough.

  Here is my list of intentions for this year:

  • make sure that wanting stuff doesn’t allow me to forget what I already have

  • do less catastrophizing

  • be a bit quiet and not mind if I sometimes feel a bit sad, even if I don’t know why

  • be honest if I find someone/something fake – I need authenticity at all times

  • be wary of folk who don’t take responsibility for their actions

  • notice and identify my insecurities, so that I can tackle them honestly

  • donate to a new charity anonymously

  • make more time for family stuff

  • make cake

  • drink less coffee

  • walk more

  • kiss for longer

  That’s probably enough, although I can think of thousands more.

  But I want to keep it realistic and possible. I reckon I might manage those and I know for sure that I want to, so … let’s see.

  In a funny way, there’s a real thrill in the uncertainty of having a whole new year ahead. Possibility is potent. I have wonderful little lightbulb moments when I believe that I’m capable of anything, and they occur most frequently at the dawn of the year, right here in January. It’s like my courage is at its most fully charged. I’m right at the top of the year and I can see a long way ahead, and it looks inviting. There, in the distance, is a mountain, a big dark-blue mountain, and I really, really want to get there. I’m not entirely sure what’s at the top of it, but I’m drawn to it and I want to try to make sure that my decisions and my actions take me closer to it. It’s a ways away, but it’s within my reach, it’s my horizon, and I’m going to do my best to get there. So long as I’m trying, I’m satisfied, thanks. I might need rests and refreshments along the way, but my face is forever turned towards it.

  The main thing that could prevent me from stepping forward is a tendency I have to fold myself away. S’funny, isn’t it? For a person who has spent a great deal of her life in groups or partnerships, on stage, in front of a camera etc., I am actually a relatively reserved creature. Maybe it’s not strange at all. Maybe it’s classic. All of us need a bit of peace and quiet now and then, but I reckon I would make a very happy hermit. With the exception of extensive visiting rights for beloveds. I am most comfortable in my own company, but equally I need to be part of my tribe of family and friends. That tight group can be quite surprisingly small, I realize. I don’t need many, just the inner sanctum of those I properly know, love and trust. They know who they are. For them, EVERYTHING and ANYTHING of me is available, anytime, anyhow, up, down, in, out and sideways. I will NEVER run out of whatever it is they need of me, I will always be there and I will fight to kill on their behalf. I’m not afraid to bite. I’m not afraid of monsters or pirates. Or Americans. I take my role inside this bubble very seriously, be it wife, mum, stepmum, sister, daughter-in-law, sister-in-law, best friend, cousin, niece, wife of gay husband or close friend. If I am your any of the above, you have direct access to my heart and soul with no filters, barriers or prerequisites. I am going to forgive any of your mistakes or insensitivities. I am going to be your advocate. I am going to listen to you. I am going to try to understand you. I am going to get alongside you so that you never feel alone. I will endeavour to never misuse you. I am going to assume that we are equal, but I am going to respect our differences. (Unless of course, they involve chocolate, in which case I will always be selfish, greedy and violent.) I am going to love you so hard you may well beg for mercy and release. Which I will NOT grant. Resistance is futile.

  Look, the fact is that like most of us, I value the time to unmuddle my thoughts. Otherwise I can’t be emotionally fit enough for what lies ahead. I won’t even get to the foothills of my mountain. I am trying to learn that if I could just embrace the uncertainty of the future, if I could find it exciting, if I worried less, life would be a more simple journey. I so wish I could more easily be impetuous, but I’m always high in the tree, on the lookout, one eye on danger, one eye on the mountain. Hopefully that doesn’t mean that my eyes are looking two different ways … it’s not an attractive look. Mind you, it never hurt Marty Feldman.

  All I really mean is that here in January, I am hoping I will remember and maintain this lovely confident feeling of intent and faith in the future. High hopes are good.

  I want to remember, all year, that I can move my chair into sun at any point. I can reframe anything if it helps me to live better. I can decide that this is going to be a good year concerning ANYTHING that I control. In other words, anything that comes from me, from my heart, from my mind, from my mouth. There are, of course, various things that come from other more challenging and personal parts of me that I simply can’t control, and long may that be the case.

  So, with a fair wind (!) behind us, come on this year, here we go, I can see the tip of the mountain in the distance.

  • A female

  • A mother

  • A wife

  • A stepmother

  • A sister

  • A friend

  • A Susan

  • Self-employed

  • Short, apparently

  • Bossy

  • A boss

  • A writer

  • A mammal

  • Punctual

  • A show-off

  • Anchored

  • A Luddite

  • A grandmother-in-waiting

  • A great kisser

  • Lost without my diary

  • All right on my own

  • A wanker

  • A Quaker

  • A Quaker wanker

  • A dog lover

  • A tip-top driver

  • A client

  • An art collector

  • A dancer

  • A person of the eighties

  • A reluctant flyer

  • A consummate nosey parker

  • A supreme twot

  • The one and only, nobody I’d rather be*

  *I’m not, Chesney Hawkes is, you idiot.

  Now you …

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  •••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••�
�•••••••••••••

  1. George Clooney

  Pros: Good jaw. Piercing eyes. Makes you feel like you’re the only one in the room. Funny.

  Cons: Amal is clever, beautiful and we really like her.

  2. Idris Elba

  Pros: Arms that go right round. Twinkly handsomeness. Calming bedtime stories voice.

  Cons: Too popular with other girls. Too many dangerous speedy / fighty hobbies combined with too many white T-shirts to maintain.

  3. Frank Sinatra

  Pros: He’s got me under his skin. Well connected.

  Cons: Too small. Is dead.

  4. Emma Willis

  Pros: Great hair so I can share / steal products. Smells lovely (I imagine).

  Cons: Too tall in heels.

  5. Nigel Farage

  Pros: None.

  Cons: Infinite.

  I've started this list, you finish it.

  6. ................................................................................

  Pros: ____________________________________

  Cons: ___________________________________

  7. ................................................................................

  Pros: ___________________________________

  Cons: ___________________________________

  8. ................................................................................

  Pros: ___________________________________

  Cons: ___________________________________

  9. ................................................................................

  Pros: ___________________________________

  Cons: ___________________________________

  10. ................................................................................

  Pros: ___________________________________

  Cons: ___________________________________

  .

  FEBRUARY

  By now any worthy intentions I had in the New Year about eating less, better, healthier, have pretty much fizzled out and I am having that interesting internal dialogue which goes like this: