"So you are going travelling for a year with your new husband," says someone who is clearly eager to buck the 'how wonderful for you both, congratulations!' trend before we leave. "Just the two of you? Good luck...."
The last two words were uttered with a tone and wry smile that rather made me suspect that this person was not betting money on our continued romance factor.
Of course, true to form, we told ourselves, indignantly, that this sort of generalisation involving couples being driven to homicidal rage faced with the horrors of spending a lot of time together in an unfamiliar setting - simply did not apply to us. That was for all those other couples. You know, the less committed ones.
Homicidal tendenciesvwe have not encountered, nor anything approaching a serious deal breaker. We have not found we loved each other less or started to make lists of irritating habits we hadn't previously seen in each other.
What we have found, as per previous blog entries, is rather less than admirable qualities in ourselves. Cue the self improvement drive, which, once you get over the shock of your own imperfections, is actually quite fun. There's something very satisfying about a bit of self improvement. It turns your shame into smugness and, after all, everybody needs a project.
Being gifted with a lovely husband who is the appropriate combination of honest and tactful - self improvement doesn't have to be done by myself. I tell M what I don't like about me - and together we make a plan.
Today's challenge is the age old lunar problem in which even the most saintly of wives might transform into a slavering werewolf every twenty eight days.
I am rather tired of coming to myself when the fatal week is over, and remembering what I hope are uncharacteristic fits of irritability or hysteria in the same way you might gradually remember your unwise activities through the haze of hangover following the twelve shots of vodka you consumed the previous night. M is rather tired of it too. He loves all the versions of me, he tells me, but some more than others...
Over a beer or two - we conclude that the root of this sort of issue is in the level of exposure. Where pmt is a physical symptom, age old and pretty much here to stay, the thing that you change has to be the one thing you can control - the consequences. If I feel over emotional or irritable, this isn't a problem until I have occasion to express it. Once it's expressed, it's a bigger problem involving more people and, once the physical effects have worn off, I can't simply walk away. I've made more of a mess and therefore there are things to clear up.
Not only that but we realise that whilst something as predictable as a bodily cycle is an obvious issue, there are also occasions in which M himself might have similar urges to become unnecessarily prickly - and similar consequences if he indulges.
This conversation having happened a week or so previously, we are ready with our chosen strategy when we wake up this morning and find I am as irritable as the calendar might predict of me, and M doesn't feel well.
We implement operation 'Red Tent'. This is a concept that comes I think from tribal influences - when the women of the tribe would, at that crucial time, take themselves away from the other members and hide, until they returned to whatever they identified as 'sanity'. A 'Red Tent' day, self prescribed to both of us, involves a few simple rules - being left alone, doing, eating or drinking whatever we liked and not reconnecting until we could feel ourselves approaching a sense of normality.
I read a book all day and eat taro chips. M writes a few blog entries, looks at recipes online and refrains from commenting on the taro chips.
At some points M sits in the garden while I allow myself the luxury of the bed and the air conditioning. Other times we sit together. But we obey to the letter the key precept of the Red Tent - that we can be in each others space, but we don't invade it.
Essentially it's a very indulgent day in which neither of us have to expend energy fighting anything. As a result we are, though a little lethargic, in gentle and pleasant tempers throughout the day until, eventually, we emerge in the evening to eat dinner and go once again to the circus. As planned.
By the time we are strolling, happily along to the circus we are very pleased with ourselves, very peaceable and very together. We have spent the day in each other's space but not each other's company and it has been a real pleasure to 'meet up again' at the end of it.
The circus is predictably amazing. It's a different story to the one we saw previously and a more moving one, based on the director of the foundation's own experiences as a child haunted by nightmares following the Khmer Rouge, nursed back to health through art therapy and going on to establish the Phare Circus foundation. (See 'Not Just Clowning Around'). I am moved to tears and to laughter, and most of all, to awe. The story is very clear and told very beautifully. I lose my ability to distinguish reality completely. When a performer representing the young girl's nightmares performs amazing feats of balance and mesmerising contortion in his threatening white mask and red scarf, I find myself cross with the cheering audience. "Stop clapping the Khmer Rouge" I say to M, only half jokingly. He smiles and takes my hand.
Afterwards, I get talking to one of the staff at the foundation. He tells me that all the children begin by studying a range of arts, including painting, music and circus skills, then go on to choose a specialism. It is often, he says, the children with the most traumatic backgrounds who go into the circus arts. They need the physical expression, the sweat and the pain that goes with it. It's an outlet. I think how very beautiful it is that therapy can also be dignity. That the foundation goes beyond charity. It's a job. It's amazing. Like the moment in the show, in which the young girl contorts herself in her sleep, using her feet to aim and fire an arrow to burst the bloody white balloon which symbolises her suffering - it is a battle fought and won, not by some benefactor, but solely by the young performers themselves.
We make our way home. As we fall into bed, mind buzzing with circus tents and red tents, I think back over the day.
The 'Red Tent' looked a little different for each of us, but was highly effective. It would have to be tweaked if, for example, the need arose on a day we were expected in work or had other commitments, but it's possible that simply one hour in the tent could fire us through until we had leisure to return, if we needed to.
As I happen to be writing this a few days after the event I can report that, at least in this occasion, the happy effects continued and there has been no further need for Red Tent time despite my calendar telling me otherwise. M, incidentally, returned to full health and stayed there.
We will have to give it time - but so far it seems to me that the tribes had it right. And as for the difficulty of spending so much time in each other's pockets - well that applies mentally more than physically.
So don't worry about travelling with your partner. Just allow yourself a little time in the tent. Red or Circus. Or both.
You can find out more about the Phare Circus Foundation, make a donation or check for any tours near you at http://www.phareps.org
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