Extended Break
6 May

The May Bank holiday has passed pleasantly enough.

The painting in Ross's studio is now complete. It's awaiting him buying some shelving for me to put up and then we can start emptying some of his boxes.

The sun's been out a lot but, though it was promised for this Bank Holiday Monday, it has remained resolutely gloomy today. I'm hoping for a break in the clouds at sunset. There's a current phenomenum in the North West sky where five of the planets have visibly lining up.

I'm particularly grateful to the BBC's Website for pointing this out to me.

Things are finally moving on the car front. By this time next weekend, we should be the proud possessors of my sister's Mitsubishi Carisma. All I need to do is to organise the payment, the insurance, the collection and the driving back to the North West. Unlike the car opposite, the one we shall gain possession of is a 5 door saloon which should make wheelchair access easy. The colour is about right, however.

We've not done a lot with our time really. Saturday brought a pleasant drink with Roland. We discussed the possibility of going to Brussels with Ryanair next January for another city break together - the last one was Barcelona.

On the video front, at home, we've been catching up on last year's classic TV series, The Way We Live Now, thanks to a BBC video purchased through Amazon. It's the sort of lavish and telling costume drama that the Beeb does with some panache. David Suchet's central performance is a tour de force and he is ably supported by an outstanding cast Cheryl Campbell, Douglas Hodge, the ever watchable Matthew Macfayden and Cillian Murphy, a very easy-on-the-eye newcomer who was the idealistic romantic lead. Excellent all round.

I've spent quite a bit of time completing Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy - sometimes outside in the sun, sometimes in the bath with Classic FM as my soundtrack, sometimes in my grandma's rocking chair in the bay window at the front of the house. I really liked the first volume Northern Lights. I liked the completely realised other world. The Subtle Knife built on the mythology quite effectively though it had the sense of being a middle book. The Amber Spyglass completes the trilogy and was Whitbread Book of the Year in 2001. I find it disappointing.

It's become more and more obvious that it has been written as a corrective to C S Lewis's Narnia books with their Christian sub-text. The more that the anti-Christian symbolism and narrative has become apparent, the more I have felt that the books have lost their spirited sense of invention. For the middle third of the novel, I felt I was treading water, getting through narrative, so that the book could end. It's a great shame because I thought Northern Lights was and remains the best read that I've had so far this year.

Ross and I took in Panic Room at the local Plaza cinema. It was a very effective popcorn movie starring Jodie Foster. I was thrilled and excited most of the time.

Coming home at quarter past ten, there were still glimmerings of light in the sky. Five months ago, there wouldn't have been that amount of light at quarter past five in the evening.

You may have thought that, because I have not said anything recently, my home life is more congenial than it was, say, a month ago. I'm sure that Ross believes this too. You'd be wrong. I approach weekends and holidays with increasing trepidation. Work is much easier. I know what's expected of me there.

At home, Ross and I continue to mis-communicate with a vengeance. He was going to go to Tate Liverpool with his care worker, Asa, this afternoon. Earlier in the day, he'd asked me if I wanted to go. I said that I'd see how my own work was progressing. When the time came, he went off without checking back. When he came back, he said he'd been to Ainsdale beach where I played as a child and not the Tate. It's not malicious. It's just slack, careless, thoughtless.

Thursday night, when we went to see Amelie, I paid for the meal. Saturday, when we went for the drink with Roland, we (Roland and I) bought the drinks - and the crisps and nuts. Sunday, when we went to see Panic Room, I bought the tickets. See the pattern. It's almost like Ross is behaving like a kept boy.

He would say that he has communication problems and problems remembering things. But he's fine when it comes to remembering and sorting out things for himself. There was no problem acquiring the paint so that I could paint his studio walls for him. And I was going to say that, in contrast to the way that I vacuum, sweep and clean, Ross seems to find reasons not to do what he said he would do. He rarely cleans the bathroom but he did just that as I was considering typing this. So his antennae may be working after all.

I have a feeling that it doesn't really count because I actually clean up in there myself on occasion because I'm not happy with the neglect. Ross has been told by his doctor that he has to be very vigilant about cleanliness because his immune system is compromised. This fact doesn't seem to encourage him to wipe up in the kitchen. In fact, five minutes a day spend with a damp cloth in any of the rooms in this house would appreciably help with the housework.

My adaptive child watches, learns, makes sure that I understand so that I can keep within and play with the rules. Ross's adaptive child goes for invisibility. If no-one is shouting then the world is a good place. If people are shouting then the world is a bad place and you keep very still until the shouting stops and then the world is a good place again. I could explain this to Ross in a great deal more detail but I don't actually believe that he would do anything with the knowledge. His child doesn't want to change either itself or its environment to prevent the shouting happening again.

My sex life is picking up. This has nothing to do with Ross, who seems to ignore me completely until he needs a reassuring hug. No, I'm eternally grateful to science and technology for the provision of the Internet and the VCR.

I do love Ross and my inner voices still tell me to be quiet and wait and not to fly off the handle and do a temper tantrum. But my inner voices also tell me that it won't be like this forever. What they don't say is whether that's because we will have reached a resolution or because we will be living apart.