Greetings on what has in the main been a fine spring day. You find me as so often listening to Wednesday night opera, reading and posting on here. Yet this Wednesday was different. For today I took the afternoon off and escaped the demands of reality to spend some hours with my great friend Ros.
A trip to The Porcupine and tapas at Jamon Jamon we made up for the last months since we met and put the world to rights. Between us we are pretty good at boosting ourselves out of the deceit that depression has bequeathed on both of us. When we met in 1989 we were children trying to find our way in a strange and at times hostile world. My illness had not yet come forth although as I know now and as Cedric seemed to realise it already lurked beneath the surface of an apparently successful high flying student.
I could never see how someone like her could be depressed. Or why. I had yet to learn of the great deceiver and how so much of our lives are kept hidden. For all my bravado and apparent confidence particularly as a singer I was flawed and as it proved nearly fatally damaged.
She has always been better at telling it in those days than I could. It took me years to find the words that truly described the devastation that mental illness wrought on me and those around me. Not until I wrote A Pillar of Impotence between 2002 amd 2005 did I find words. Ros always had words.
So all these years later we can look, laugh and cry. To the world today as we sat on a sunny day in London we were just a pair of 40 somethings. To us there is so much power in being understood.
It was all too brief but I did enjoy our lunch and taking her round the wonders of a Chinese supermarket. I emerged with preserved black beans, Shoahshing rice wine and pickled garlic. All the things I could not find on my last trip.
And so spiritually enlightened by the company and produce rich I can continue my way on here, in the kitchen and in my daily life. Thanks for a great day Ros.
I Heard a Voice.
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