"I'd love to do xyz but I don't have pqr."

If I really want to do xyz, I will move heaven and earth to find all the pqr I need.

If I pretend I can't do xyz because I don't have any pqr, people will start trying to help me find pqr, and then I will either end up sulking, or doing something that I didn't want to do in the first place.

There is no need to feel guilty about not doing xyz. It's not because I'm weak. It's not because I'm lazy. It's because I don't want to.




It is absolutely fine not to want to do things -- even things that seem fun, or are good for my body or my soul. I do not need an excuse. All I need to do is to be honest in the first place.

Thaw: Chapter One

This is the first chapter of Fiona Robyn's latest book, Thaw. The heroine, Ruth, is thirty-two years old and doesn't know if she wants to be thirty-three. The novel tells, in the form of her diary, how Ruth makes the decision.

Fiona is publishing a chapter a day, and is hoping that 1,000 other bloggers will publish the first chapter today.

These hands are ninety-three years old. They belong to Charlotte Marie Bradley Miller. She was so frail that her grand-daughter had to carry her onto the set to take this photo. It’s a close-up. Her emaciated arms emerge from the top corners of the photo and the background is black, maybe velvet, as if we’re being protected from seeing the strings. One wrist rests on the other, and her fingers hang loose, close together, a pair of folded wings. And you can see her insides.

The bones of her knuckles bulge out of the skin, which sags like plastic that has melted in the sun and is dripping off her, wrinkling and folding. Her veins look as though they’re stuck to the outside of her hands. They’re a colour that’s difficult to describe: blue, but also silver, green; her blood runs through them, close to the surface. The book says she died shortly after they took this picture. Did she even get to see it? Maybe it was the last beautiful thing she left in the world.

I’m trying to decide whether or not I want to carry on living. I’m giving myself three months of this journal to decide. You might think that sounds melodramatic, but I don’t think I’m alone in wondering whether it’s all worth it. I’ve seen the look in people’s eyes. Stiff suits travelling to work, morning after morning, on the cramped and humid tube. Tarted-up girls and gangs of boys reeking of aftershave, reeling on the pavements on a Friday night, trying to mop up the dreariness of their week with one desperate, fake-happy night. I’ve heard the weary grief in my dad’s voice.

So where do I start with all this? What do you want to know about me? I’m Ruth White, thirty-two years old, going on a hundred. I live alone with no boyfriend and no cat in a tiny flat in central London. In fact, I had a non-relationship with a man at work, Dan, for seven years. I’m sitting in my bedroom-cum-living room right now, looking up every so often at the thin rain slanting across a flat grey sky. I work in a city hospital lab as a microbiologist. My dad is an accountant and lives with his sensible second wife Julie, in a sensible second home. Mother finished dying when I was fourteen, three years after her first diagnosis. What else? What else is there?

Charlotte Marie Bradley Miller. I looked at her hands for twelve minutes. It was odd describing what I was seeing in words. Usually the picture just sits inside my head and I swish it around like tasting wine. I have huge books all over my flat — books you have to take in both hands to lift. I’ve had the photo habit for years. Mother bought me my first book, black and white landscapes by Ansel Adams. When she got really ill, I used to take it to bed with me and look at it for hours, concentrating on the huge trees, the still water, the never-ending skies. I suppose it helped me think about something other than what was happening. I learned to focus on one photo at a time rather than flicking from scene to scene in search of something to hold me. If I concentrate, then everything stands still. Although I use them to escape the world, I also think they bring me closer to it. I’ve still got that book. When I take it out, I handle the pages as though they might flake into dust.

Mother used to write a journal. When I was small, I sat by her bed in the early mornings on a hard chair and looked at her face as her pen spat out sentences in short bursts. I imagined what she might have been writing about — princesses dressed in star-patterned silk, talking horses, adventures with pirates. More likely she was writing about what she was going to cook for dinner and how irritating Dad’s snoring was.

I’ve always wanted to write my own journal, and this is my chance. Maybe my last chance. The idea is that every night for three months, I’ll take one of these heavy sheets of pure white paper, rough under my fingertips, and fill it up on both sides. If my suicide note is nearly a hundred pages long, then no-one can accuse me of not thinking it through. No-one can say, ‘It makes no sense; she was a polite, cheerful girl, had everything to live for,’ before adding that I did keep myself to myself. It’ll all be here. I’m using a silver fountain pen with purple ink. A bit flamboyant for me, I know. I need these idiosyncratic rituals; they hold things in place. Like the way I make tea, squeezing the tea-bag three times, the exact amount of milk, seven stirs. My writing is small and neat; I’m striping the paper. I’m near the bottom of the page now. Only ninety-one more days to go before I’m allowed to make my decision. That’s it for today. It’s begun.

A few things about hair

1. Curly locks, curly locks, wilt thou be mine?
2. Da Vinci drew it curling and running like water flowing.
3. Hair floats in water. It feels soft and free when you are swimming. But when you get out, it is heavy and sticky and prone to tangling.
4. When the wind gets in my hair, it sets into hard sharp points that whip my face. It doesn't do this when I'm blow drying it.
5. Hair in the plug hole is disgusting. I don't even like to think about it. It is also disgusting when it gets mixed up with dust and blows into the corners of the bathroom.
6. I don't like hair that gets caught in a hairbrush. I hate the grey fluffs I find among it. But I like to comb out my hairbrush and then wash it. The bristles become shiny black again, and the hairbrush looks very pleased and proud after a wash.
7. On a dry night I like to brush my hair in the dark because I like to see the static. It is marvellous to hear it crackle. In the morning, I like to see the strands fly out -- I am extending the reach of my head.
8. I like to twist a hank of my hair, moving back from my forehead towards my temple. I pin the ends above my ear. The bundle of hair feels smooth and hard.
   
9. I don't like to see an old woman with greasy, dirty hair. I feel angry that she has neglected herself, and then sorry, because she might have problems reaching her head, or perhaps her shower is not working and no-one will fix it for her. Her family has decided she is too difficult and grumpy.
10. There is advert hair, which gleams like a french polished table, or a tumbled stone. I imagine technicians wearing headphones rubbing and buffing it until there is nothing left of the real hair. Advert hair is hair that I can never achieve -- but I expect myself to try.
11. There is newly washed and dried hair spread over the pillow and a whispered: "You smell nice."
12. There is hair that looks better than it should at 3pm on the third day since my last hairwash.
13. It is lovely to have, on a hot and bothersome and frustrating day, your hair brushed off your face by a cool hand.
14. When hair gets in the way, it is a great relief to tie it into a pony tail, or to pin it back, or trap it under a tight hat.
    
15. Hair can be one thing (a single hair) or lots of them.
16. It is very satisfying to pluck out a single stiff hair that has been sitting invisible at the corner of my lip.
    

List of things that will not help

1. Putting another knot in the rope.
2. Hitting it.
3. Swearing at the fucking thing.
4. Hitting someone with it.
5. Using your teeth.
6. Pouring petrol on it and setting fire to it.
7. Running it on an empty tank.
8. Pushing it into a smaller space.
9. Rubbing it with a solvent.
10. Using an abrasive cleaner.
11. Adding more salt.
12. Putting it through the blender.
13. Shouting at the call-centre worker.
14. Bleach.
15. A boil wash.
16. Leaving it in the sun.
17. Salt and soda water.
18. A brisk rub-down with a rough towl.
19. An emetic.
20. Rubbing with grease.
21. Buying a newer model.
22. Trying to raise the nose cone.
23. A piece of kitchen roll.
24. A small square of foil.
25. A weak borax solution.
26. A repair man.
27. The fire brigade.
28. Consulting a physician.
29. Marker ink.
30. Dusting with flour.
31. Plunging into iced water.
32. Washing it with cola.
33. Boiling it in vinegar.
34. Selling it on Ebay.
35. Static mats.
36. A copper bracelet.
37. Reporting it to the authorities.
38. Filling in a form.
39. Taping it shut.
40. Replacing sprockets.
41. Hanging it in a damp place.
42. Placing in a cool oven.
43. Sending it by courier.
44. Never speaking of it again.
    

Ten pleasures that don't cost very much

1. The chance to be creative: Now that spending is out, I have to be a bit creative about how I get my jollies. That in itself is a pleasure, as sometimes it feels as if the things I make are beautiful, but rather useless.
   
2. Books I didn't know I had: I go through the bookshelves and discover a pile books that I haven't yet read. Now I have the time to read them all if I like. I feel as if someone has just handed me 20 free books.
3. Stretching: Body in Balance is a free-to-view channel which broadcasts exercise routines: including a variety of yoga styles.
4. Cheap video games: There's a branch of CEX in town: it's a shop that will take back your old games, and give you credit which you can put towards new (or secondhand) ones.
5. A mint plant next to the front door: Every time I brush past it, I smell it.
6. Fleece blanket: I'm so glad we bought a fleece throw last winter. It was only £15, and I bought it to go on the bed. As winter comes on, I spend most of my writing day wrapped up in it.
7. Languid beauty: I was amazed by all the beauty products I had stashed away. I guess that when I had an income, I didn't have the time to enjoy them. Now my morning routine (more like a mid-morning routine) is about twice as long and feels very luxurious.
8. Finishing food: I've got time to use up the leftovers, so there is much less waste in our household now. I also have the headspace to come up with ideas, and the energy to carry them through. Last week we got four beetroots in our veggie box. I can just about manage one beetroot in salad (I like them raw and grated into long, earthy-tasting magenta strips). But the rest? Then I remembered chocolate beetroot cake, and the rest is history. A rich, reddish chocolatey history.
   
9. Charity shops: To get the best out of charity shops, you need to have time for a regular run. Which I do. If I have clothes that I don't wear, I try to imagine what would make me wear them: they often just need a top or jumper to take them into Autumn. I carry in my head those missing-piece outfits whenever I go to the charity shops. Most of the time I find something -- not always what I expected. Tanktop the colour of redcurrants, anyone?
   
10. Having a lie in whenever I want: Even more fun because Nick has to go to work. I don't do it very often though, because I really like eating breakfast with him.
    

10 Activities for a naughty housewife

I am presently not entirely employed. I spend a lot of time at home doing chores, looking for work and scribbling. But that doesn't fill all the hours that stretch between Nick turning to wave as he turns the corner at the end of the drive and him startling me at 7pm by tapping on the window as he comes home.

Here are some other things I can do:

9am: Fail to empty the compost bin.
10am: Return to bed with my Ninendo DS.
11am: Eat Nutella straight out of the jar.
Noon: Take a shower and use large quantities of beauty products.
1pm: Watch a Warner Brothers cartoon DVD.
2pm: Coffee with a friend, followed by shopping-but-not-actually-buying-anything.
4pm: Cook a complicated and untidy supper.
5pm: Nap
6.57pm: Race round hiding all evidence of Nutella, make bed, plump cushions, putting ribbons in hair.

My favourite stories: Number four: The blue radio that may have come from space

I was moving out of my first flat because I'd quit my job to go travelling. It was a happy occasion, of course, because I was very excited by the adventures that lay ahead; and I was glad to get out of a damp old concrete box. But it was a sad occasion, too: I'd been happy there; it was a huge leap into the unknown; and I was anxious about flying alone to Pakistan, meeting the group and starting the journey.

So all these feelings were sloshing around inside me as I cleaned the flat for the last time before leaving. Most of the boxes had already gone, including the one containing my stereo. As I washed the windows, I thought "I wish I had a radio to give me something else to think about."

At that moment, there was a cheery "Good morning" from the open front door. It was the postman. He had a small parcel for me. "Lucky I caught you," he said, handing it over.

I pulled off the wrapping. Inside was a small blue radio, and three batteries. No note, no packing slip to give a clue as to who sent it. I stood there astonished, feeling as if somebody, somewhere really did care about me. It's a bit of a leap of logic, but it made me sure that this travelling wasn't all a terrible mistake.

I still have the radio. It's a reminder that the world is full of wonders, and to look out for the signposts.