Well I didin’t make it to the writer’s workshop. I went down to Streatham to deliver the manuscript I’v been editing, and just conked out.
It wasn’t my fault! The night before, monilove23, T and I were hanging out in the apartment talking one set of shite and nonsense. I knew I had to get up early and move, if I wanted to get the delivery of the manuscript done, as well as make it to Willesden Green library.
We had been waiting for W to show. He had gone down to Woolich and had said he didn’t know when he was coming back up the road.
I stayed up as long as I could, until exhaustion and prudence sent me to sleep.
The next thing I know, monilove had opened the bedroom door, told me W was here, and did I want to get up and hang out.
I hadn’t seen W in almost all the time I’ve been in Kent. To be completely truthful, he’s probably the one I miss the most. He’s this tall, tall, tall-ass, beautiful man. I mean, he’s one of those truly good looking men, that even if you were in a steady relationship with someone, you’d stop to look on the street.
However, beauty aside, he’s also one of the smartest, most politically aware, ambitious, socially conscious men of African descent I’ve ever met, and well, that’s what has been most interesting to me.
When I first came up to London, monilove and T had to work every day, and at first I felt Id have to roam alone, and/or stay in the house by myself with little to do, and noone to talk to.
In fact, it was W who saved me from such a fate. He’d come by during the day and check on me, we’d have a smoke and talk, talk, talk. Best part is, he and I have the same birthday, and it’s reflected in both of our personalities because we have all this common ground philosophically, politically and intellectually.
Before anybody goes thinking there’s anything more than that between us, let me disabuse you of the idea. He’s a good guy and I like him a lot as a friend. That’s all. I have now genuine affection for him, because it’s rare I meet young black men with such developed social and political consciousness and it has made for some truly interesting conversations between us.
I may of momentarily wanted to brush him, but he doesn’t perform cunnilingus and has a girlfriend, so you know, bye bye birdie. Big Mami does believe in ‘No lickey, No sticky’. Anyway, it’s kind of moot, because we don’t see each other that way in any case.
However, he’s become my friend and when monilove told me he’d finally showed up on Friday night, I jumped up out the bed, still kind of sleeping, threw my arms straight up over me head and walked out into the little foyez of the apartment, three my arms around his waist (it’s like as high as I reach) and then sat down on the floor so I could wake up a little.
In the end we all stayed up for some hours, liming, watching TV, smoking and talking real, real, real shit.
So the next morning, getting up was a little rough. I had to leave home around 8pm to get to Streatham with enough time to get to Willesden Green Library where the workshop was being held. I left about a quarter to nine.
The trip was arduous. It took up about two, two and a half hours to get there, and by the time I got there, I was tired and sleeping on myself.
When I got upstairs by the author of the book, I was just knackered. She said to me she was too tired to make it to the workshop, and I replied, “Mama don’t worry, I studying if to go myself.” Then I told her about my friends waking me up from sleeping to lime.
So, I ended up not going.
Instead, I ran through the manuscript with her, then sat and watched Empire Strikes Back on DVD with her roommate, (probably for the 800th time, since it’s one of my all time favourite movies) and ate some pizza.
I got paid! It’s not a whole hell of a lot of money, and it won’t last long, but it’ll he enough I can get a warm coat, a couple of sweaters and maybe some gloves and a scarf, and still have enough money left over I’ll be able to survive for the next few weeks.
The meeting with the professor on Friday afternoon went well. We talked quite frankly, and I enjoyed speaking with someone so knowledgeable and well read. He asked me to email him my CV right away, and walked me to a cybercafe around the corner from the coffee shop we were in, and left me there to do the emailing.
Before I left the cybercafe, he’d replied that he received it.
Our conversation in the coffee shop led to him saying he;d mine some of his network, to see if there anybody out there who could dig up some work for me. He also suggested I come up to London and spend a week, because then he send me to some launches/lunches, conferences and other type meetings so I could start creating a network for myself, and dig out some possibilities for funding for Sunhead.
Chile, it’s becomiing abundantly clear, whether to London or anywhere else, being in Kent is not helping my cause much. It’s fine to have a roof over your head, but there’s no work to got in those parts, and the distance and cost to travel in prohibiting me from searching further afield.
Anyway, I think it went well. He made a suggestion, that of teaching a few nights a week, that I hadn’t thought much a bout, but now the more I think about it, it’s beginning to sound interesting.
Today, monilove23 and I are going into Woolich to see if I can get some of that cold weather stuff. I have to start seeing about myself, because I know the cold I got last week had to do with not being warm enough and not having clothes suitable to this weather. It’s like 10 fucking degrees, oui?
Where I come from chile, 21, 22 degrees celcius is considered cold, and it only gets that way at night!
You never mind my little stuggles and difficulties; I love my life. I love being alive, and I see God in everything, even the sturggles. I am learning things every day, incorporating lessons learnt every day.
I don’t need things to be perfect, I just need God to love me enough to take care of me, and Oludumare does. She loves me, cares for me, and all her children, the Orisa are here with me as well.
I am a lucky woman. Lucky in every sense of the word, and I don’t doubt the path of my life any more.
.Okay, off to Woolich.
Add comment