Just letters on a page

The house is still and almost silent. OH is asleep on the sofa. DD is asleep in her cot. The washing machine has just finished it’s cycle and the only noises are the tick tick of the large round wooden clock on the kitchen wall behind me, the sound of cars driving too fast along the road outside the house and the omnipresent hummmm of the fridge and freezer. It’s so unusual for the house to be this still at the weekend that I don’t want to sully the tranquillity with technology. Instead I reach for pen and paper. The scratch of the roller ball on the page is mesmerising, stupefying even. I let my mind wander and my hand flow across words that float like clouds in a gentle summer sky. I can forget that I was the butt of a mild Twitter rant yesterday, that I’m still seven pounds heavier than I’d like to be, that I haven’t booked my place at Brit Mums yet because I’m afraid to lose my anonymity, that I finished DD’s leftovers again at lunchtime and that I’ve got an hour of seriously hard exercise ahead of me this afternoon. I can spill the words out onto the page and let them puddle there, not splashing in them with emotional wellies but just watching as a breeze catches the edge, sending ripples circling outwards. Later they will become real again. Words will crystallise into deeds, tasks, feelings. But for now they’re just letters on a page.

Image: Simon Howden / FreeDigitalPhotos.net