25 ways of being Ms Baroque

1. try to get the boys over here at lunchtime.

2. make them sort through some of the stuff I've cleared, but chance would be a fine thing; I'm sure the Urban Warrior isn't even in bed yet as I type this, he was going to some squat party. And the Rock God, I never got him on the phone till 7pm, and he informed me he's been sleeping all day! He'd been up till 4.30am but that's still 15 hours of sleep. I haven't even seen him in two weeks, his dad doesn;t speak to me, and his dad evidently thinks that's all okay then.

3. try to figure out a way of getting all the stuff down to the charity shop. Try to make the pile even bigger before I do that. I know who I might call, a longsuffering friend with a car, who I think reads this blog...

4. can't ring the bank today, it's Sunday; a friend told me I need to register for online banking and he was right. I need constant access to the fiasco.

5. tomorrow, then: transfer some (more) money from the savings; try and salvage something of the wreckage of my current account. Once it's salvaged, try and keep it salvaged. I used to be draconian with money! I think I just got tired...

6. oh: go to the supermarket! There's nothing for lunch.

7. but have a bath first.

8. make the Sunday lunch - I wanted to make a cheesecake yesterday but I never got to the shops. I never even left the house! I fell asleep for three hours on the couch and woke up to watch "The Quiller Memorandum." George Segal surprisingly cute in his youth, but for a thriller it has a deeply "where's the story?" plot - could be one of those sixties jokes. Anyway: so what am I going to make? If I don't use the oven I could still do the cheesecake but it won't be ready for lunchtime, of course. Something cheap. Maybe with sweet potatoes. Sausages. Spinach.

9. I need a 4.5mm circular knitting needle for the little crop cardigan I promised to make for Mlle B. I've been trying for two weeks to get to the little knitting shop in Cross St, and still no luck. It will be nice in there, I'll really like it. But it won't be today.

10. logistics. The thing I'm doing - the Big Decision - is, I'm clearing out the boys' room and I'm going to have a bedroom. The price is that my boys will no longer have a room in my home. But they're the ones who pissed off to live at their dad's, right? Without even saying anything! They just gradually stopped ever coming back. And I'm sitting here with no bedroom. Several people, including Mlle B and one boy, have told me this is by far the most sensible thing for me to do. It's a small flat, for pete's sake. I don't have the luxury of leaving a room. Even for my kids. Who by the way I fought tooth and nail for. If it weren't for the fact that even this place takes up half my income, & I'm in a decent job, it'd be easy feel as if I'd failed somewhere along the line. Anyway, I need:
a. shelving put up
b. their stuff taken out: bunk bed, two chests of drawers, a big broken chipboard bookcase, plus their things...
c. and done something with, and I can't count on them to do it, and I have no car
d. a blind put up, ever since a mad, silly friend let her wild kids run loose in my home last year and the curtain pole got pulled down
e. a bed
f. rearrange everything in the whole house to accommodate newfound space
g. sonmehow do this without throwing the whole ecosystem out; it's like a nine-square puzzle in here. It's not something you can really do on your own.
h. oh.

I want to do this by Christmas. I'm assuming that the sensation of being in one's own deeply fluffy bed, with too many pillows and a brand-new duvet cover that doesn't have green acrylic paint on it, will be absolutely splendid. I'll probably get addicted to it.

11. pay British Gas and Virgin Media.

12. ring O2 and see about an upgrade so Mlle B will have a phone again; not that it isn't kind of nice having a holiday from her racking up the calls...

13. edit manuscript for Salt. There are many things to think about and a big, centrepiece kind of poem which is just coming together now; but it's a little strange. I mean over-the-top. Nobody's seen it yet, of course, except me.

14. finish wonderful Ruth Fainlight interview, which seriously is going to be a Great Thing.

15. send poems out - I never seem to do this enough, and I know why. It means looking at them in a cold, analytical way, like children whose faces are never clean, and who are not even precociously cute.

16. this year I am determined to get the quinces and the vodka and to make the sublime and mysterious quince schnapps of memory! I've been saving up giant pickle jars. And the quinces are coming in now.

17. I need a coat. Shaming, on saying that, to hear Mlle B say, "um, excuse me Mummy, but don't you have, like, tons of coats?" Do I? So why don't I have anything I can simply wear to work in this weather and be neither freezing, with exposed forearms, nor broiling hot and dripping sweat in the tube? I have a wonderful Nicole Farhi coat it has to be below freezing before you can wear. I need to weed them out, that's what. My staple black suede jacket of many seasons will fall off me soon. The rips are just getting embarrassing.

18. it's hard to get a coat if you can't even get out of the house on Saturday.

19. it's hard to get a coat if you're completely skint. And Mlle B needs one too.

20. further expenses looming in the near future:
a. go to USA (le comte has been given weeks, not months, though I note with some pride that he seems to be taking the extended option)
b. Christmas
c. a bed - and indeed blinds, shelving, a rug, lamps, etc - the accoutrements of a bedroom, in short
d. a handyman
e. everything else, as usual

Strange, this bedroom idea: like everything else nice I've got lately, I'm getting it in a way that makes me more depressed than not having it. Except the boys are gone anyway. Anything else on my part is just sentimentality.

21. we delicate Baroque types don't always do very well on our own. Which is odd, really, since that's where I appear to live. I did put in a few calls to friends yesterday, but nobody rang me back. Then it was the rugby, I guess, which reminds me: my commiserations to those of you who care about it. And then of course I pushed everyone for this Sunday lunch thing, which is now like a millstone round my weary neck and looks like no boys will be coming, and even if they do they'll leave me with all the dishes. My aunt informs me she plans to bring her dog.

22. as I never got out I never got my things to the cleaners. Though how will I pay the cleaners.

23. And I don't have a pair of black shoes I can wear to work, and I'm getting really sick of having to be so creative all the time with the tights, the brown shoes, the not-quite-black, the fishnets. I'd love a pair of nice, smart, funky black shoes I could just put on in the mornings.

24. A very kind friend sent me a photocopy of "The Art of Poetry" by Kenneth Koch. The pleasure was too intense the other evening when I started to read it, so I will now go and read it in the bath. Fifteen pages of New York School bliss.

25. work tomorrow.