I've Other Work I Want To Get Done

November was busy too. The short days seem to leave me with little time to do any of the things I'd like to. "I'm going to make all my Christmas presents this year!" I boasted to my colleagues over lunch. "Wow!" they said. I should eat lunch alone, under my desk. To prove that I was serious about it, or at least more serious about it than I was about knitting a scarf for Andrew last Christmas (I got ten rows done, one plain, one purl, one plain, then I forgot overnight how to do purl...) I bought 10 kilos of wax and a spool of wick and two teacups with saucers. I bought 6 yards of floral fabrics and some fat quarters, I borrowed my mother's sewing machine and I spent an hour collecting pine cones (in the pitch dark) on my way home from work one evening. I've been collecting jam jars since the summer. I have more of them than you'd think.

Any of you on my Christmas list should lower your expectations accordingly.

I said that I am left with little time to do any of the things I'd like to, but that's not strictly true. I have little time to do the things I aspire to. I seem to have found enough time in November to read 3 novels, a book of short stories and the whole of the internet. I found the time to watch countless hours of television; countless only because I tell myself that it doesn't count if I only watch programmes that I've recorded. Documentaries. Subtitled crime thrillers. The Big Bang Theory.

I haven't found the time to write anything.

"Can I refurbish that old computer and take it home?" I asked my boss on another lunchbreak. "I want to write a novel." Sure, she said, just don't write it about us. I took it home and set it up in our converted attic, where it keeps the sewing machine company. I visit them both occasionally, when I'm hanging up the washing. "As soon as I have a bit of time to myself" I whisper to it, and the half-hemmed skirt on sewing table heaves an exaggerated sigh.

Haven't Seen You In Quite A While

October was busy. We went to Colm's birthday party. I love him, his lover, their dog and their friends. They have an extraordinary talent for celebration that I feel I lack. I drank wine and smoked 'til my feet felt funny and my tongue got thick, then asked Andrew to bring me home. "Need a seat for the lady!" he bellowed, steering me towards the couch. "I'm not disabled!" I hissed. "I'm not pregnant" is what I meant, but my words weren't coming out right.

I went to Holles St. later that week to have blood tests done prior to our appointment with the fertility clinic. I was shown to a waiting room full of heavily pregnant women queueing for weigh-ins and widdle tests. "What week are you?" asked the nurse. "I'm not" I said. So I was sent to another waiting room across the hospital where nobody was pregnant and two of the waiting women were crying. "Where are you in your cycle?" the nurse asked. "I don't have one" I said. I can't win, is what I meant.

The following weekend, Andrew and I spent the Saturday taking care of my two-month-old niece and I thought "I could do this!" and I looked at myself sneakily in the mirror as I cradled her, trying her on for size, trying to imagine myself as a beautiful young mother. I am not young to be a mother any more. We spent the day cosseted in the sitting room, making Tilly burp and smile and watching television when she slept. That night, I asked Andrew if he thinks we'll ever have a baby. The "ever" makes me sound like I'm impatient to be a mother. I'm not. I am just so tired of thinking about it all the time that I just want to be told, one way or the other, so that I can get on with everybloodything else. "I don't know, my love" he said.

Andrew turned 30 and I felt better for it. It bothers me that I'm older than he is. I used to tell anyone who asked that he was only 4 months younger than me, but I'd counted backwards instead of forwards and I'm actually 8 months older than him. I am not good with numbers, even the single digits. "Who do you think looks older?" I ask small children whenever I have an opportunity to. They invariably say that he does. They are smart enough to recognise that I am needy and that he has the thicker beard.

His grandfather sent him some silver serving spoons in the post as a birthday present. I am charmed that George bestows practical heirlooms upon us on significant occasions, and that he thinks to post them with a letter. His great heart and good manners are inspiring. Since moving to our new home this summer, we've been able to employ all of the chattels we'd been gifted when we married; cutlery and crockery, crystal and candlesticks, all of it pleasingly old-fashioned. I feel like I have arrived in the world, now that we have a spare bedroom and eat with our own cutlery. We have a happy home.

We took a holiday from it to celebrate Andrew's birthday and since our return, Biscuit, our half-baked cat, has started scratching at the bedroom door at night. Every night. At 5am. Scratching and crying and then running away to hide under the bed in the spare room or halfway down the stairs to the kitchen. I chased him off last Wednesday night and he smashed a sinkful of crystal wedding-gift wineglasses in the kitchen in retaliation. At 5.15am. I hauled on a dressing gown and stood barefoot on the cold kitchen floor, surveying the damage and feeling every minute of stolen sleep seeping out through the soles of my feet.

"Do you want a cat?" I asked Gimme in the pub the following Friday night "because I'm going to put him in the fucking Buy & Sell". "You don't want kids" said Gimme. "No" I said, and I lifted my pint, pinkie extended.