November 10th

We are so happy and amazed at the quality of the responses so far. Thank you! And here's your Message for Saturday:

273

I’m counting my blessings. There are five of them. Security’s wrapped up in bed, nurturing is in the kitchen, luxury soaking in the bath, love’s waiting for me on the sofa and creativity’s popped out. She’ll be back when she feels like it.

I’m putting all my eggs in one basket. I collect them up each month in soft blankets and keep them in willow nests I’ve made in the trees. At night I go out and listen to the wind whistling through.

I’m seeing the wood for the trees. I spend hours carving the initials of everyone I’ve ever loved into the bark of young saplings. Over the years I’ve watched the love grow until some letters take on a life of their own, branching out in all directions.

I’m running before I can walk. I’m gone before you have time to turn around and tell me to stop, that I can’t do that, that I’ll never be able to do that. See me go. I’m doing all the things you never thought I could.

I’m putting the cart before the horse. It likes the view better that way. It never knew what it was doing before. This way the horse can take an active part in proceedings. Can feel really involved.

I’m falling before my pride. I need to, so I can get to the bottom before it, cradle it safely down in my arms so nothing gets broken, that it isn’t damaged, that it can carry on being so beautiful, so big, so vivid.

I’m a bigger fool than any old fool I know. I’m red-shoed, red-hatted, no knickered. I’ll fly high up to the sun and flex my unburnt wings. I’ll never be sorry one day. I’ll never come to my senses. I’m loving every minute.

November 9th

And a happy Friday to you! Here's your message for today:

179

He waits until Annie’s asleep before he can do it properly.
It’s not that she resists him. She has no idea of what he’s doing. He knows that by the way she tries to keep secrets from him. It’s just that it feels more proper somehow to have rules.
So, only at night, when she allows the dreams to come, does he slip in too. It’s so amazingly beautiful, her mind. She’s no idea. Keeps saying things like how muddled her thinking is, how much crap she has stored away, so much useless knowledge.
But he walks round the loopy grey and silver corridors breathless with excitement. He’s been in other minds before, but they had regular clean outs. Annie’s kept everything.
He'll never get bored in there.
He goes down her playground memories, listens to the skipping songs, feels the fear as teachers prod and poke at him as he goes past, running automatically to kind playground assistants just as Annie must have done.
He can’t resist stalking her first loves, asking out loud how she could have found this one attractive with his red hair and freckles, or how this one could have found HER attractive.
But it’s the travel aisles he enjoys the most. Here he just sits and lets Annie’s excitement wash over him as she sees a whale swim up to the boat she was travelling to Greece in; snorkels over coral reefs in America, barters for Moroccan jewellery. He sips mint tea with her, scoops up spicy rice with his fingers and lets sweet candies explode on his tongue.
He never gets bored of it.
‘I love you,’ he tells her every morning. ‘You interest me more than any other woman I’ve met.’ And what he loves most is how much he means it.

November 8th

Hey, we've been going for a week now, and the response has been brilliant. Thanks to everyone who's taken part so far, and welcome, if you're joining us for the first time. As usual, click on Comments at the end of this message to post your own 300 words.

54

Front door key, back door key, car key, garage key, suitcase keys, all the keys you have, you lay them all out. The key to the photocopier room at work, your neighbour’s key, a tiny chrome key for a diary you threw out years ago, the key to your Granny’s clock, the winder key for the oak kitchen table, chrome and bronze keys, Yale keys, Chubb keys, the key to your mother’s house even though you left ten years ago. You don’t know what some keys are for. You’re all keyed up. There aren’t enough keys to the puzzles around you. If you found stiff locks you’d oil them so their keys turned smoothly. If you had the keys to the city you’d keep it open twenty-four seven. You don’t want to look through keyholes and you’ll never use the key to the door at the end of the long dark corridor. You won’t. You promised. Maybe there’s a keyword you’re missing, or a key on the keypad, the keyboard that you’re not striking. You should know by now that things only work properly if you key in the right number. You don’t know what key you sing in. You want to go to the Florida Keys. Did he leave his key? He left his key. It’s a blue key. You try it in the lock – it slips in, turns easily, and opens the door. You close the door and do it again. It works every time. You hold it tightly until it feels hot in your palm. You want to lock up your heart and throw away the key, let it rust at the bottom of a drain, turn green in a lake. But you’ll make a duplicate. It’ll be a good thing to have more than one key.

November 7th

Good morning! Here's your Message for today...


267

This is how quickly it can happen, you think. This is how quickly your life can change.

It’s just another ordinary day. You’re crossing the station concourse peering up at the board to see when your train’s due. You’re not looking where you’re going when you bump into a strange man. As he helps you up, he touches your arm and you feel a jolt of electricity. You stare into each other’s eyes and you can’t quite get a grip of reality any more.

I’m sorry, you say after what seems like another life and he smiles. Will you take the package now or later, he asks. You don’t understand and he stops smiling. Don’t fuck with me, he says, this is too important, and then he starts to back away hissing at you. People around you are pretending too casually that it’s not happening. Suddenly you have become an outsider.

This is how quickly it can happen, you think. This is how quickly your life can change.

You run after him. I’ll take the package now, you say, still not really understanding but wanting him to smile at you again. He does and you slip the brown envelope into your handbag without another thought. It hardly makes a bulge. He touches your arm again. I’ll catch up with you later, he says and you nod. You’re both smiling so hard at each other you think your cheekbones might burst.

You float back to the destination board. Trains are toot-tooting in parallel with your happiness. Commuters are turned into angels. When the hand falls on your shoulder you turn in anticipation of something good, something wonderful. It’s two policemen and they’re not smiling.

This is how quickly it can happen, you think. This is how quickly your life can change.

November 6th

Your Tuesday morning therapy session! As usual, respond by clicking on Comments.

158

Did you have a happy childhood?
What is your happiest memory?
Are your parents happily married?
Are you happily married?
Is your husband happy?
Do you believe you have a right to happiness?
What would you choose if you had to decide between being happy and being secure?
Are your children happy?
Could you make them happier?
What’s the happiest thing you can imagine doing?
Do you cry when you’re happy?
If you had to locate happiness in one part of your body where would it be?
Do you ask yourself Am I happy?
Do you believe New Years should be happy?
When you are happy how do you express it?
Do you think that searching for happiness is one of the main sources of unhappiness in the world?
Is happiness your goal?
What is more important than happiness?
Would you take a happiness drug?
Could happiness be a negative state, a passive condition, which undermines things you should value more – your striving and yearning, your improving and growing, your inventing and discovering?
Is happiness a side-effect?
Would you rather be a happy pig or an unhappy person?
Is there such a thing as false happiness?
If you went to a fancy dress party that had ‘Happiness’ as a theme what or who would you go as?
What’s the point of happiness?
Is it true that happiness justifies the means to its attainment?
Are serial killers happy?
Who’s the happiest person you know?
Do you know what happy is in any other language?
When was your last really happy birthday?
Do you know the etymology of the word ‘happy’?
Is it possible to dislike very happy people?
What does happiness taste like?
What shape is happiness?
If you were given a single wish would you wish for a happy life?

November 5th

Something that we hope will brighten up your Monday morning. Respond via Comments, as usual.

34

I guess some people are tolerant, but it’s still not the acceptable thing for a bloke to do, is it? And it’ll be a long time before Society changes enough for us all to be open about it. A girlfriend found a stash of wrappers in my car once.

‘It’s not normal,’ she said.

Of course, there was a gleam of hope with Yorkie bars but you could tell they weren’t thinking of us once you saw the ads – lorry drivers looking more like male models than your average knackered, unshaven juggernaut type.

It’s all women – in overflowing baths (can you imagine the grief we’d get for flooding the bathroom floor?) getting sexy with a Flake, or a couple of giggling girlies sucking Maltesers up with a straw. There is one with a bloke – him and his girlfriend on the sofa watching a horror movie and he pretends there’s a scary bit coming so he can scoff one of her Quality Street. Now that’s good – chocolate and cunning, I like that. But why do they have to use a fat bloke? I’ll tell you why – they want to put us off.

But they won’t. We get it at garages, motorway service stations, in the newsagent’s on a Sunday morning when we’re picking up the paper. Of course, you won’t hear us talking about it like women do. We eat it and we shut up. We don’t even talk about it to each other. You see a couple of women at the supermarket check-out with a few bars and packets on top of their trolleys and they’ll start up a conversation in no time – I know I shouldn’t…, If I don’t have a small bar every day I get really cranky… Not us.

Blokes don’t make comments about other blokes’ chocolate.

November 4th

We hope you're having a good weekend. Here's your Message for today - please go to the comments box for replies as before.


129

It was the change in her knees she noticed first. She’d run further than ever before and was treating herself to a hot bath. She sang as she soaped herself and came to a full stop halfway down her thighs.

After that, she went on and on noticing. Her knees weren’t the only things emerging from the layers of fat, beautifully defined and purposeful looking. There was the faintest shadow of a line down the side of her upper thigh that grew deeper and deeper until she could run her finger along it. Her calves developed until she could cup one in each hand and feel how they moved when she stretched her leg.

Even dressed, she took to stroking her bottom feeling not so much what was there as what wasn’t. She’d tuck her hands into her waistband to feel the narrowness of her stomach. Whenever she went running now it was difficult to stop. She spent hours pouring over the map, planning longer runs. Once she got over the difficult first 100 yards, she felt she was floating. She’d just fly down the street, looking into brightly lit windows and pleased to be outside, to be moving onwards.

Onwards and upwards became the rhythm of her steps. She was levitating.

She used her body at every opportunity. Sitting at her desk, she’d flex her toes so she could feel the muscles react. Walking across to the photocopier she’d force herself not to break out into a skip at the very pleasure of the movement. She got so fit she couldfeel her skeleton moving. Every bone, every muscle, every fibre became a perfect machine that let her move.

Once someone asked her what she did. She smiled broadly, pirouetted on one perfectly toned foot. ‘I run,’ she said.

November 3rd

Good morning. Here's today's message - click on the comments button to respond.

278

the coalbunker smelling of earth and onions spades and rakes a hoe garden forks leaning against the cinderblock wall an empty metal bucket some cardboard boxes with dusty overlapping lids the onions plaited into ropes hanging from big nails and kept in the dark all winter their papery skins flaking in your hands when you broke one off the door was latched and padlocked the keys on a hook too high for you to reach

the front room venetian blinds slanted so no-one could see in from the street a dark oak table with flaps that pulled out at each end and pinched your fingers when they dropped into place the stereo you had to be careful with the gas fire’s chalky blocks trapping blue and orange flames the woman who wore a headscarf to say a prayer the books of the bible from Genesis to Revelation you learnt by heart

your bedroom where you could see the sea and hear the sea when you closed your eyes at night the two single beds with yellow candlewick bedspreads yours with a bald patch where you picked at the tufts and always said you didn’t your sister scratching your back the G-Plan wardrobe with sliding mirror doors and a big drawer at the bottom the shell box and the blue glass bambi

the tumps you ran up and down petered out at the BP chemical works the grass was sharp your calves ached in the soft sand you ate picnics in the valleys to keep out of the wind at the Ferry Bend there was a wreck you could see at low tide a girl called Faye pushed you down one once because her boyfriend liked you and Geoffrey Moyle tried to make you laugh he kissed you in Verdi Road

November 2nd

Thanks so much everyone for that fantastic response. And here's the second one - please add your pieces to the comments section just as before.

39

Kumi’s rushing ahead. She always does. It comes from being a two-child

family. Kumi and her sister have special benefits because they are so unusual.

We were told about it at Meeting. How her mother and father had extra-fertile

seeds and eggs which made more than their allocated one. Kumi and Kestra

stood at the front as the teacher pointed out the features that were shared by

two bodies coming from the same parental gene-mix. We were told how

fortunate we were to see this at first hand and not through photographs.

So Kestra went to the Museum of the Past and transferred the memories to

Kumi. The rest of us have to make do with fresh vision. Kumi drags us all to

see the skeletons of women from the 21st century, and for once she hasn’t

exaggerated the horror. A scale measures the primitive women against the

men and although it’s impossible to believe, male and female are almost

the same size. The female skeletons are straight and so broad they look like

men. I mean how freaky is that.

Sura stands next to one. It’s almost double the height she is, and so ugly

without the elegant curves of her legs and backbone. The arms look

doll-like and useless, not even reaching the ground. The head is positioned

on an upright neckbone, looking ahead. It’s shaming thinking how women

then must have met each other's eyes.

We are silent as we walk into the underwear room. We laugh at the skimpy

bits of cloth, and then the first clumsy attempts at cage building. All of us

surreptitiously feel under our gowns for the tight metal cases surrounding

our bones since birth, shaping and refining our perfectly bent and twisted

bodies.

Thank Femininity, we think, as we hobble through.

November 1st

and Your Messages is 'live' from today with the first of this month's daily messages. Your enthusiasm and feedback for the project have been amazing and infectious and we look forward to sharing more of that with you over the next 30 days. So, click on Comments... and post your responses to:

154

He taught you everything you know about snow. You know it’s frozen
vapour, watery particles congealed into crystals that fall to earth. You
know it’s formed in the air when the temperature of the atmosphere
sinks below freezing-point, that the minute crystals of ice form flakes
which present countless modifications of the hexagonal system. You
know these crystals adhere together and form irregular clusters, and
that the incident rays of light which are refracted and reflected to
present individually the prismatic colours, are scattered after reflection
and combine to give the colour sensation of white. It was years before
you realised that this meant snow lies.

In the years you spent together it only snowed twice. The first time,
you woke and knew it was there even before you’d looked out of the
window – something about the light, flat and shadowy. And sound was
flattened too, the cloak of snow muffling everything from birdsong to
car engines. Neither of you wanted to shovel the drive, preferred to
leave the drifts undisturbed. When you had to go out you played a
game of walking in each other’s footsteps. You liked the look of a single
track leading to and from the lane. You made a snow-rabbit together.

The second time there was only a skinny crust of the stuff. The
gravel on the drive poked through as soon as you stepped on it. By the
next day it was a tide of brown slush, by the day after, it only looked
like it had rained.

It wasn’t the snow’s fault, you’re not blaming it, and you don’t want to
bestow it with symbolic significance. It’s only that you can’t think of
him now without thinking about snow. About the snow-rabbit. How
for weeks you watched its slow escape into the melt.