The writer who couldn't write

“Shitting shit it!”

She found herself gesticulating wildly at the laptop, hands open, pleading with the blank screen. She was trying to write, and nothing was coming out. She’d walk around all day with crazy, random creativity popping into her head and out onto pages, and now this last week; nothing. Radio silence.

Her partner sat beside her, half asleep and making stupid noises, like a crazed baboon. He couldn’t seem to help himself; what was wrong with him? She could barely get two words out of Mr Shy at the best of times; then when she needed ten minutes to concentrate, he turned into a sugar-hyped toddler screaming for attention at the sweetie counter. Tears were streaming down his face; he loved to wind her up. Thing is, she couldn’t help herself; she was laughing too. Was this what their relationship had turned into? Some kind of crazy comedy show, peppered with hysterical laughter, random irritation, and a kind of easy familiarity?

He was supposed to be writing too, working on his ‘short story’ that had got carried away and morphed into a forty seven-thousand-word behemoth and was still growing, but in fact when she glanced sideways at him, he was now playing with his phone; the phone that was permanently ‘missing,’ yet simultaneously never far from his side. “Where’s me pho-en? Where’s me pho-en?” she’d mock-imitate in his Midlands accent.

She played some ‘music for focus’ on her phone play list; a gently hypnotic sway of piano. More to relax herself than him. Amazingly, within a couple of minutes he’d shifted the top half of his body across to the left of the sofa, leaning on a gym bag from their earlier swim, his face relaxed and resting on the palm of his large hand, already starting to sleep. It never ceased to amaze her, this ability of his to fall asleep literally anywhere, in any position...

Whilst stood ironing, the sizzling iron still in his hand and an appropriately shaped scorch mark on the back of tomorrow’s work shirt.

Flat on his back and fully dressed, on the bed like a giant starfish.

Leaning on the bar at a pub mid-conversation whilst deafening rock music blared and people chattered. These imaginings were mainly in her head of course (well, the last two are anyway). He looked so peaceful. Funny how everyone looks about five years old when they are asleep; scrunched and adorable and at rest. God, she loved him.

Yesterday was interesting, hilarious. In her eyes, anyway. They’d driven to the money-gobbler that is IKEA for a browse and to look for garden furniture and plants, and she’d had terrible wind. It wasn’t planned – just one of those unfortunate things… in fact, it was so bad, and the smells so terrible and impossible to disguise, that she was giggling even as she typed this!

Much running away, hiding in enclosed areas of the store, trying to stay away from other shoppers, giggling fits and tears of laughter were involved, followed by looks of amused disgust from him as he unknowingly walked through the cloud of DEATH, also known as: The Rotten Egg Factory.

She tried to blame the restaurant meal they had eaten two days earlier, for her horrendous gas, claiming it ‘was delayed.’ He snorted in reply: “Two days? It’s tapas, not British Airways!”

She was starting to think that as you got older, you got more childish. Most humour these days seemed to revolve around bodily smells and noises, and things one simply shouldn’t laugh at in polite company. Soo childish...

Yet it was this taboo-ness that made it funnier, as she sniggered at things to herself uncontrollably. If her partner was trying to behave or be serious at the time of the bodily eruption or observation, then that made it a thousand times worse; that just took her back to childhood dinners sat at the silent table of DOOM. It was okay when it was just her, her mum and her sister; they’d talk, and laugh, and have an enjoyable, easy time. But when their terrifying, menacing father was there, it was silence, all the way, no conversation allowed. He was so insecure that he believed all laughter was aimed at him, therefore it was a threat and not allowed.

She always enjoyed dinners with her partner; there would generally be music playlists involved, and he liked to be hands-on. They would both skirt around the kitchen, operating various pans, the oven, the chopping board. He was one of those men who liked cooking, providing a good, tasty meal on a plate for those he cared about. Sometimes he would sort the cooking and she would chop or grate, preparing a few sliced mushrooms, some cheese, a few tomatoes, or maybe a little cucumber on the side. She would pop a slice of something in his mouth whilst he was cooking, resulting in a comedic “OMMM” from him; then she would pop something in her mouth too. It was a joyous and often chaotic dance of dinner preparation, and she enjoyed it.

She looked sideways across at her snoozing partner; amazingly, he had fallen asleep with his face wedged onto a hard, circular tub of her moisturising lotion. How did men do that? She sniggered a little, and he opened his bright blue eyes suddenly, and sleepily smiled at her.

She smiled back, and realised that the writer who couldn’t write, had written herself out of her writer’s block.

Happy January everyone x