Sorry if this entry makes no sense; I'm very ill
Going to my mother's house is like travelling from a poor communist country to the decadent west. I've just come back from there, and my head is spinning still from luxuries like Sky television, showers, and a corner sofa.
I arrived Tuesday. The journey was quite short, all things considered, only two-and-a-half hours. (I remembered 7/7 two stops before Liverpool Street so sat there frozen in fear and breathing through my teeth with the other commuters giving me slightly askew looks behind their newspapers.)
Mum met me at the station. I almost didn't recognise her, but she saw me straight away. It's depressing how my face never changes, and people who knew me when I was 8 could probably still pick me out of a lineup. (I'll never make a good killer.) I followed her outside and stopped dead in my tracks.
'What is that?!'
'What's what?'
'That.' I waved my arm towards a multi-coloured monstrosity in the directions of Sainsbury's.
'Oh! Summink to do with the university? They sleep there..or summink.'
'That is bloody horrible.'
'Ah, I'm used to it now. It's all changed round here, you'll see.'
I did see. Boots has moved, there's an inexplicable second Starbucks, there's now two H&M's, approximately 372837289 branches of Costa, some kind of faux Victorian sweet 'shoppe', Dead Glam, the Goth shop (run by the man who looks like he's permanently on the edge of tears) has moved to somewhere equally as improbable and Specsavers is somewhere else entirely.
I don't recognise Southend anymore, which is good because it helps me get over missing it. The Southend I knew, the map of it in my head, no longer exists.
Another thing - I haven't seen my Nan in 15 years. A year or so back, they'd fallen on hard times and become reconciled with my mother. She'd pulled some strings, and now my grandmother and my mentally ill uncle live just across the road in a quaint little cottage type house.
Mum decided that now was the time for a visit and practically dragged me to their house. She opened the front door, pushed me through, signed to my Nan 'This is Nadia' and before I knew it, I was having the whole life squeezed out of me by a tiny elderly woman. She let me go finally, and before I could try and get my glasses back on my face, or pat my hair into any type of recognisable shape, she'd taken me by the hand and was showing me around her little house - the bedroom, the larder, the garden.
I'd forgotten how to talk to her. I do know how to sign, I learnt it at the same time I was learning to talk, but it seemed to have escaped me that afternoon. I could follow the conversation between Mum and Nan reasonably well, and remembered that odd little quirk she has: speaking to my mum only in ISL and to my uncle only in BSL.
Anyway, after a while, my mum could see I was a little confused and uncomfortable so she made excuses for me and finally took me home to the flats across the road. Lephise recognised me immediately. I scooped her up and was shocked how light she was, compared to my Pablo who is quite chunky. I'd missed her fluffiness, and her croaky miaow, and her complete intolerance for everything.
The next two days were spent in blissful relaxation in mum's warm, nice-smelling flat, so far away from my own house. She let me sleep in her massive soft bed and slept on the sofa herself. I woke up on Wednesday morning, made mum a cup of tea, and asked for a bath.
'There is no bath. Didn't you notice?'
'Didn't really look...and how do you mean, there is no bath? how do you wash?'
'Got a shower now.'
'A...what? I don't really get showers. I mean, standing up to wash, I'm sure that's not right.'
'You'll get used to it - I had to. I'll turn it on for you, shall I?'
...and off she bustles towards the bathroom, leaving me standing there, filled with a sense of foreboding.
(I had the shower. I was scared and confused throughout the entire thing.)
Thursday morning, I decided that I should go and visit the wonderful magpieopus - she's so awesome, and possibly my favourite person ever. I got on a horrible ramshackle bus (Crawley buses are so clean in comparison) and arrived at her house in the early afternoon.
She's put on a whole afternoon tea for me, bless her, with biscuits that spelled out my name. There was tea and milkshake and pink lemonade and all kinds of cakes. If I hadn't been quite ill that day, I would have eaten more (as it was, I took some home and my mum wolfed them down)
We talked for ages, and watched DVD's - Little Shop Of Horrors, The Witches, and Who Framed Roger Rabbit. I've really missed her. We discussed the terror of showers, and I was glad to hear she's equally as wary of them. I ended up not staying as long as I'd wanted; I was ill and needed sleep. As I came out of the front door, gruesome_suitor came running up. She was worried she was going to miss me and had dashed home from work. Ah, I love her. I gave her a massive hug and they both walked me to the bus stop. I'm missing them already :(
I caught the train home yesterday, not before my mum had forced £200 and a new toothbrush on me. Pfft, parents.