#autobiograpical

March 17. Today I'm cleaning at Claire's house, one of those arrangements that is transactional and intimate.

I like her.

I think we'd be friends if she wasn't paying me. Maybe one day, I'll stop cleaning and we can actually try. Does it work like that? Lucia Berlin wrote a short story, probably based on experience (she was dismissive of enquiries about the 'truth' in her writing) called "A manual for cleaning women". It's funny and true.

(Cleaning women: As a rule, never work for friends. Sooner or later they resent you because you know so much about them. Or else you’ll no longer like them, because you do.)

"I've got to go out. Sorry about that. I'll put the radio on for you," Claire says.

We often chat when I'm between rooms and she's working in her dining room. It's a pleasant combination of mutual industry with intermittent giddy exchange, quickly extinguished for propriety.

"Magic ok?" she asks a bit nervously. We know each other well in some domains, but not all.

"That's fine," I say, "I can do Magic". It wouldn't be my first choice but I can't imagine what would. I haven't listened to a radio station in years.

She leaves, family tasks to attend to. Her absence is successfully obscured by chirpy male and female DJs, doing a sort of teasing couple bit.

A prerecorded voice announces "hits from the 80s till now," which strikes me as an absurdly elastic category, spanning nearly half a century, as if it were a unified cultural moment. The voice brags about not repeating songs for "the whole workday".

What unsettles me in the continuing broadcast is the realisation that I know every song. I've been there for every song. I'm someone in every song.

The Backstreet Boys emerge from the speaker - their harmonies engineered for maximum teenage yearning -and I'm thinking of Jalin, a fighter I knew who used them for his walkout song, which paired with his professional brutality - earned him the adoration of the crowd. I realise I have been gone from that life for over three years. Do I still have claim to those people, and that version of me? I leave him a voice message, compelled to find out.

Natalie Imbruglia sings "Torn," and I remember the video, her iconic, baggy, low slung combat pants. That cool side fringe. She must still eat out on this song. There is probably someone listening to it every minute of every day, somewhere.

Savage Garden follows - they were never good.

Wham's "Freedom" plays, thin, tinny in a way I've never noticed before. I'm transported to an optimistic, wide eyed pre-teen, fantasising about having a boyfriend, and whether George Michael would really fall in love with me should we be thrown together in unusual circumstances (turns out probably not). I can't help but smile, and I feel an urge to whirl around a bit with my cleaning rags.

I don't listen to music anymore. This is something I don't tell people because they look at me as if I might be unwell, or unclean. Music makes me uncomfortable in a way that's difficult to articulate. I'm unwilling to revisit songs from my past, as if there is no value there. None of the new songs impact me, as if I lack the ability to be moved by music.

Yet here, trapped in the commercial cathedral of Magic FM, I'm experiencing something like involuntary integration. With each familiar chorus, fragments of my history collide. Puzzle pieces that don't quite fit but suggest a larger picture. The pre-teen finding their own music, the teenager so excited about going out, the first broken heart, the second... the breaker of hearts.

Is this why people subject themselves to the randomness of radio? Is this the function of music itself - to bring our scattered pieces together? The thought occurs to me while spraying glass cleaner on Claire's bathroom mirror, watching myself disappear behind circular motions of the microfibre cloth.

Walk decisively, or the flood of people, will carry you away and you'll wash up in a ditch. I'm striding through Waterloo, pretending to know where I am going. I falter at a large, hanging sign with one of those arrows that points at 45 degrees. Does it mean down the escalator? Or right-ish? I'll need to choose. An employee in a CUSTOMER SERVICE vest is passing.

"Hi, excuse me, can you tell me how to get to Lost Property?"

He replies in a stream, like an auctioneer, without pauses. I nod my understanding with the same urgency he delivered. I'm glad he gestures, I would have gone the wrong way. I memorise his consonants and repeat them back to myself like a mantra until the directions become real. "Down the escalators and make a right and another right and if you don't see it ask someone down there."

The escalators take me down, right past a McDonald's unit delimited by a spotless glass screen, so insubstantial it's like the idea of a McDonald's rendered in a futuristic Hollywood film. It has those self-service screens like flagpoles in a carefully ordered grid to minimise interaction. Service reduced to touchscreens and QR codes - all very efficient until something goes missing. Keep walking and more glass doors lead out of the station, to a utility road under the girders of the station.

It's rough, dirty and industrial under here. Delivery vans unload boxes of single-serving creamer. A steel barrier prevents me from stepping into the road, and a woman in a brown McDonald's hat leans her weight on her arms, exhaling slowly on her smoke break. I wonder to myself if that's permissible, in the Crew Member Handbook? I keep walking and find the double doors to the Lost Property office. A young woman just in front of me presses the release button on the doors. I follow her in, but she says to me, "You go ahead, I'm on the phone". I step forward into the small cubed room, and she moves against one of the four walls.

It's windowless and glaring, like a large walk-in wardrobe. It's quiet too, all the sound and motion of the station suddenly extinguished. It's airless, and a bit musty. There is a closed-up fireplace on one wall, and I'm confused how this could have been a room for an open fire. The floor has weathered grey lino and two blue upholstered chairs screwed to one wall. They're covered in stains, a bit shiny, like decades-old chewing gum. The desk area behind the counter is darker and empty.

I may have lingered too long. The woman steps forward on my behalf, perhaps with impatience, pressing a buzzer beneath a sign saying "Ring for assistance".

A man in his early seventies with thick glasses lenses emerges from the door at the back. His hair is white and wayward. He looks a bit like he's been sleeping.

"Hi," I open, "you emailed to say you've got my luggage."

He blinks at me vaguely, giving the impression he doesn't see me too clearly - but is at peace with that.

"We emailed, huh?" he says in an unhurried air. I smile and press the phone against the glass. I've got the email open. I'm prepared. Ready for war. Ready for disappointment. He peers at it, looks up at me, and says, "I'll take a look." He shuffles back out of the back door and I take a seat on the black shiny chair. I forget the woman has said she is on a call, and say nervously, "This place is a bit weird". She gives me the polite "I know you've forgotten I'm on the phone, but I see you" look.

I examine the room, but there isn't much to see. An ugly telecom set with a boxy, yellowed speaker in plastic attached to an angled mic that reminds me of a gynaecological tool. A poster lists the 'Recovery Charges' which vary from £20 for laptops to £10 for phones. Bikes and musical instruments are £3, and "keys, reading books and Filofaxes" a mere £2. Medicines are free. There is also a daily fee for electrical items (£1) or anything else (50p). This looks like the kind of information that causes disagreements.

I'm trying to remember what is in my bag, and if the total will be cumulative, but the clerk returns, and with two hands lifts my yellow luggage at eye level, like an offering. I give him a big beaming smile of joy.

"There it is!" I exclaim, stepping forward.

"ID," he asks, placing the luggage down. I'm prepared, I pass him my maroon British passport under the slit in the perspex. He takes it, flipping through the pages.

He keeps flipping.

And flipping.

Until he reaches the very last page.

The emergency contact page.

He looks up at me. "Martin Reyes?" he asks.

Confused, I nod, adding, "That's my husband."

He looks down at the passport again, reading Martin's contact details.

He looks up at me.

"New Mexico?" he asks.

Unsure what we're actually discussing, I nod, blankly.

He shrugs as if it's not worth his time, and takes a side door out of the office. A few seconds later he magically appears, from the street entrance, and places my luggage down, leaving without a word.

I leave quickly, eager to get back into the stream.

I live in a mews.

I didn't know what a mews was before I lived there. It's a row or a courtyard, with spaces that were once used for stabling horses and storing carriages. The upper floors were often used as living quarters for grooms or coachmen.

Now they are mostly residential - and any stables are long gone.

I like my mews. There are about ten residences here, flats over converted garages, some of which are now workshops, businesses and studios.

To enter the courtyard you walk under a peculiar, almost trefoil archway. I always think it looks like a giant lock and I imagine a golden, twenty-foot high key that would fit in it.

It's a listed building, which in the UK means it's of special interest, and laws protect it from being subject to significant changes. It's one of those fusty things about the UK that I enjoy. Although I own no property that I'd like to alter, so I only see the benefits.

My mews has a public database entry to categorise the features of interest. It looks like this:

Dwellings over garages. c.1881. Yellow stock bricks, moulded brick and stone dressings, brick quoins, slate and bitumen-covered hipped slate roofs with overhanging eaves carried on bracket cornices. This is the only mews with an archway entrance. In the area, it's the only mews originally built with such an imposing entranceway.

I love that this is someone's job; to study these buildings, identify its features with the appropriate esoteric language (what's a quoin? I'll leave that for you to look up) and write these passages for public record.

This isn't the point, other than to say my mews is a peculiarly historic environment, a negotiated space with shifting purposes. There is limited, time-sensitive parking for the homes and businesses that operate there. Sometimes it can be hard to wind my way through multiple vehicles, walking my bike to my front door.

Today as I was walking home with my bike, a car and van were parked parallel, blocking most of the courtyard. I started to squeeze past on the car side but found it too narrow, so I turned back and went around by the van instead.

A large man, over six feet tall, stepped out squarely in front of me, blocking my path.

"Where are you trying to get to?" he said firmly.

I felt an unfamiliar emotion stiffening me. Contrary to my usual friendly demeanour, I replied, “Why?” - a single word, both question and boundary.

There was a pause, where I held his eye. It may have felt longer than it was, but after that moment I sensed he had moved a little out of my way, and I began to move forward.

“I thought my car might be in your way,” he said, his tone still authoritative, but I didn't stop to look at him.

“I live here,” I said. From behind, I heard him say, “I suppose I should have recognised you.” I kept walking and let myself into my flat.

It took me several minutes in my kitchen, whilst I paced about, still wearing my bicycle helmet, to analyse the feeling.

It was anger.

I had to replay the event to discover why he had angered me. Had he really done anything wrong? His words were not obviously hostile. How had his body been turned towards mine? Why did I feel he was looking down his nose at me? What was it in his stature, his tone, that had offended me so?

When these things happen, I often test the situation with my own behaviour. Would I have stepped in front of someone and spoken in the way he did? If I had meant well, how might I have approached a stranger that perhaps was put out by my car? All I could think was that I’d have opened with an apologetic 'Is my car in your way?'

Another simulation I run is would he have behaved in the same way were I a man? In this case, I think the answer is yes. This was not about gender. I would guess this man is an established homeowner in the mews. There was something proprietorial about his manner, as if I were in the grounds of his castle.

I feel satisfied with my response.

I have not always been the quickest to respond to an emotion, with trust. I remember in therapy years ago. I’d retell, as if to a friend, with words tumbling out, a situation that had upset me. The therapist would lean forward urgently and say, “Where do you feel it in your body?” This would silence me, and I’d think, “Oh fuck off.”

I still don’t feel emotions in the way that would satisfy my old therapist. I don't know where in my body the anger was. What matters today is that I let it lead me.

Sometimes the body feels things quicker than the mind can unpick them. I was raised to be polite, be pleasant, and not to cause a fuss. When I followed these rules, and ignored my instincts, I found myself disappointed afterwards.

It’s too easy to assume guilt or wrong-doing when confronted. Like an ill fitting door, it drags and forms an ugly welt over time.

I'm tired of the old rules, and these small moments of self-possession are how I reclaim my own thresholds.

Making small talk

Cleaner: So, where are you going away?

Client: Black mountains, near the border with Wales.

Cleaner: Good choice.

Client:

✭✭✭

Client lets me in the house for the first time.

Cleaner: What about my shoes?

Client: Oh, we don’t worry about the carpet

I look down at the 80's floral carpet in pinks, pulling a grimace.

Cleaner: But it’s so lovely.

Client:

✭✭✭

New client asks me about my connection to their last cleaner, who passed on the work.

Client: So, how do you know Louise?

Cleaner: (laughs) The cleaning underground! We have WhatsApp groups you know.

Client:

✭✭✭

New client shows me the vacuum cleaner.

Client: Sometimes the roller isn’t spinning on the Henry.

Cleaner: (Confusion) But a Henry doesn’t have a roller.

I inspect the Henry.

Cleaner: (With a dubious head tilt) I think you'll find that’s an after market head.

Client:

✭✭✭

On arrival at a new client's flat.

Cleaner: So, the house looks perfect! When I spoke to your partner on the phone, she was saying what a mess the kids made, but this is really tidy!

Client: (looking hurt) Well, they’ve been away for two weeks. (and then slightly sadly) I have them two weeks on, and two weeks off.