the matchstick man

"so i am here, and i am alive and so are you. i live and i breathe and i am real and i am raw. the nights grow dark and my eyelids begin to wilt like the flower of last summer. 

this is the start of my year as lady lazarus. 

i rise with my red hair / and i eat men like air

and dear reader- welcome home."

many moons ago, your caravan girl started a blog. no, not this one. the blog i refer to was for the dearest reader only. the above script is the entire contents of the first post, and maybe at some point all the rest will become available for public internet access. don't get your hopes up, guys. of course, the blog in question was not the first (the first being a sweet little effort titled "the indie girl next door" dear god somebody should've humbled me), but instead the successor. it ran for just over a year, with fewer posts than what you would all be used to. shorter, more inwardly-reflecting, that blog site served as a culmination of intimacies; a diary, confessionals, dedicated love letters to my most dearest reader. it was my most favourite blog. stark red, black and grey trimmings, course and curt and cutting. it was the first artefact i had produced that felt entirely mine. 

it was called Lady Lazarus.

★

lovely people, the day is sunday. the day of rest. if you're working, quit your job! if you're exercising, sit down immediately! if you're doing literally anything- STOP! now is your time with the caravan girl. rest with me, won't you? it's nice to have you here. cuppa sorted?

& are you sitting comfortably?

then

let's

begin.

★

sleek, majestic, lovely. flying close to the river, practically skimming the slipping surface, the first heron i'd ever seen. a beautiful beast. i watched with quiet awe and followed its flight path; downstream, up and over the footbridge, round into the still spring evening's warmth. the sun wasn't close to setting, but it was threatening descent nonetheless. tom was tying his shoes, and my moment with the heron put me at peace- a deep breath while the trees swayed ever so slightly. quickly i turned back to face the river, catching sight of steady rowers. i was reminded of my day by the harbourside, where i wrote the mascot and the bucketlist. sweet. and as i looked down to tell tom about my memory, all sense of remembering was lost. for he was on one knee, and April the 8th suddenly became the day i said the easiest "yes" of my life. it's funny, all those movie notions of time stopping or slowing down aren't true. i can say it now, for certain. we laughed a lot that evening. we do every day. he's one of the funniest blokes i've met, but he reserves it for people who have earned it. i like that.

after a while of walking, plastic toy ring on my finger, we took a perch upon the riverbank. listened to the water. felt the leaves grow around us. i lay down in the grass, and tom sat hunched. he watching the water, i watching the sky. we didn't speak for a while. i thought of everything- i thought of everyone. the girls from the confession, my parents, the friend in the Netherlands, the cinephile in America, Elly, the guitarist, the people i grew up with, the people i know now, the band i was in, the band i am in, the people i've worked with. i thought of who i was now, who i have been. twenty years on this earth and now i was engaged. now i am engaged. i couldn't quite wrap my head around the idea, to be honest. we got the bus home in silence. i listened to America by Razorlight, Wild Horses by The Sundays, You & Me by Penny & The Quarters. 

tom waited two years for me to get my act together. he told me he loved me first, no man has ever done that (massive slag here xx). apparently, he knew he loved me when i peddled him into a shop and practically accosted him from the other side of the store; "tom!", enquiring on which outfit looked better. i told him i loved him too. and then we all know how the next two years went. either way, when the guitarist and i burnt to ash, i made a call to tom the next night. there's a quote that Billy Crystal delivers perfectly; "when you realise you want to spend the rest of your life with someone, you want that to start as soon as possible". so of course i called tom. and of course i called the dearest reader.

★

many of you will have realised by now that you are just merely on the sidelines to the grand show, that you're perceiving the play from the stalls- perhaps more accurately the upper circle, that the dearest reader is, in fact, one living breathing person. i will detail more effectively in the coming posts, do not fret. i constructed Lady Lazarus as a means to communicate, it was my countering to a journal. it was my offering to a writing far superlative to my own. and when Lazy Lazarus was laid to rest, The Caravan Girl was erected in her stead. 

★

the dates were set- i would see tom first for coffee. it would be a warm-up. for the main event the next day- dearest, who i hadn't seen in a long, long time. the last time i had spoken to the both of them, they'd confessed their love. both very different people. both very similar people.

tom had grown up. in the coffee shop, lightly spritzed in Calvin Klein, muscular, open. he was ready for my call, he was ready for our date. there was no doubt in his mind that we were for each other, and considering the difficult and promiscuous mindset he adopted when i had first met him, this change was a culture shock for me. we talked and laughed and flirted and kissed and despite my plan to get an early night to see the dearest reader the next day, we made our way back to my sleepy home. he asked for a cup of tea "bloody lovely". christ- match met. 

as you typically do, we discussed favourites. colours, animals, etc. he asked artwork. i said i didn't know the name, but a framed masterpiece was hiding under my bed. while i set about retrieving it, tom detailed of a painter called Lowry who typically constructed greying landscapes and matchstick people; a commentary on mundane every day life. i couldn't believe it, for the framed masterpiece was in fact a work of tom's favoured artist; VE Day, it's called. fate? i hadn't believed in that in a long time. we progressed to other favourites. places, movies, etc. i was turning to fix the blanket on the bed as he asked "poem", and so when he grabbed my decaying copy of Sylvia Plath's "Ariel" and flipped to a random page he of course didn't expect to be met with the words coming out of my mouth staring back at him from the paper. Lady Lazarus. fate. maybe it seemed more plausible now.

he showed me two of the most beautiful songs i have ever heard that night. he became my matchstick man. and i, i had been resurrected. 

many of you will know that shortly after, i joined tom's band Treemask. our latest single just came out, tom wrote it all if you don't count my bridge, and he's one of those people i have previously termed "genius". you guys all know that he's putting on an act, right? no, i guess you probably don't. he does it so well. the album he's been working on is a conceptual triumph in my opinion, and it details The Circus that he's previously written about. my favourite song from the upcoming record comes with bias. of course. for these are the lyrics to My Lady Lazarus:

"We capture an image of our eyes 

And in your room is where we lie

O my enemy 

Do I terrify? 

I opened the book to the exact page 

That you were mentioning 

And we held each other’s gaze 

For what seemed to be 

But the morning was though I’d lost my voice 

And you changed your whole demeanour 

Well, I’ve always been your second choice 

And I can’t keep just believing"

it had been a very long time since i'd felt like the girl with red hair that i was before Bristol, the girl that wrote only for her dearest reader. but every time i open that song with the beautiful keys part my betrothed constructed for me and me alone to play, im her again. 

oh you guys, don't worry. read the circus again, tom addressed dearest himself. my matchstick man writes alongside me, you see. and although the dearest reader will forever remain my eternal muse, tom will be here to write too. 

when tom asked me to marry him it was the easiest yes of my life. he's the one. and although i write about it here as The Caravan Girl, and he writes about me as Lady Lazarus, by the riverside with a corduroy jacket in the April sun i was a girl called Daisy in love with a boy called Tom and really, that's the best kind of proposal a girl could ask for.

the next post will address the dearest reader.