Now you see me, now you kind of don't...

Every now and then, when everything is getting too shouty, I do hide behind the curtains in the front room in the hope of Five Seconds Peace (when you're an adult, people rarely look for you behind curtains) but now I've seen Liu Bo Lin's artwork I think I may have been getting it wrong.  What I NEED to do, actually, on occasions of necessary crypsis, is to carefully paint myself into a crafty camoflauge with my surroundings.

To be honest, from looking round me at the moment, all I'd have to do is cover myself in sketches of discarded toys, socks and dog hair, and I'd pretty much be there.

But anyway, Liu Bo Lin's utterly mind-boggling artwork had me sitting in open-mouthed wonder for a good few minutes today and surely that IS worth a post?!!

Liu Bo Lin: Beijing camouflage artist

Do do doooo check him out on google images - it's superbly diverting!

Brazil. Nuts?

The more I hear about Brazil, the more I want to go there; that is the purely the fault of C with her amazing stories and pots of guava paste for my cheese, and P and his superbly delectable feijoada.  Quite annoying.  A year ago I could think "Brazil" and move on, but now I think "Brazil, when oh when will I EVER get there in this life of Children and Dogs and One Salary?" and start feeling disconsolate and itchy-feetish.  I really, really want to go.


Well, this has kept me going this evening.  I don't speak Portuguese but, with some clinging to Latinate familiarity, it seems to uneducated me that the point of it might be to encourage one to, er, save water?

Come on, Brazilians.  Enlighten me, please...




Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh...
I'm sure I shouldn't, in these times of global shortage, but I can't help a big EEK. Us English, hey. We are so VERY prissy.


(Oh, I know, I know.  Speak for yourself.  Etc...)

Too Early to Nowell?

I suppose one good thing about Christmas coming earlier each year is that in times of infant defiance, you get  longer to blackmail your children with Phone Calls To Santa.  I find that at this time of season, a simple "Hello Santa?" into my mobile is enough to blow any bottom-lipped mutiny into smithereens of Sudden Compliance.

But today we had one of those super magazine-mummy moments when calm reigned utterly. For one blissful half hour, no one smashed anyone with sofa cushions or accused anyone of being stinky.  They lay across the floor drawing pictures, said please and thank you to various things, and even the dog was smiling. (But note to self: did anyone pop in unannounced to witness this and be amazed at the wonders of my mothering?  No, they bleeding didn't. But when there's cacophonic chaos and things strewn, oh yes; then, in they flock...)

Anyway. Not being one to miss a choice opportunity, I asked what they might like Santa to bring them this year for being Really-Really-Good-Like-This-At-All-Times.

I don't object to children believing in Santa, and I was shocked recently when one eyes-a-flame mother unleashed an unsolicited jeremiad on me suggesting I should. But I do see that it is slightly double-edged. On the one hand, it is incredibly endearing; this wide-eyed, unsuspicious trust in an all-benevolent old man who sails through the skies to deliver real reward for all the Being Good they have done.  There is such an innocent charm to it that of course you don't want it dispelled; that would be proof that they are growing into harder, more cynical, thinking beings...and God forbid.  But on the other hand, when the Santa list includes "Long Haired Pig (real one)", "Totem pole like the one at Virginia Water", "Granny to Come Back Down From the Sky" and "Mega Mindy costume, dolls and Absolutely Everything Else" (when on earth will poor Santa find time to shop in Holland?), you do also need to find some clever way to prepare them for disappointment.

To distract them somewhat from the impossibilities of their hopes, I asked what Santa should bring Daddy and I.

The oldest was immediately adamant.  Daddy would need beer, some books, something for his bike, new rugby boots, a tool kit, and something to take his headache away. The youngest nodded in approval and that was that.

"And me?" I said, quite hopefully.

There was silence.  After a while, J looked at me.  "The thing is, Mummy, when it was your birthday you told Daddy the Only Thing You Wanted In The Whole Wide World was a Banjo".  (Ok, I admit it, I did say that) "And now you've got it. So there isn't anything else you'd want." (Damn me and my absolutes).  "But that doesn't matter Mummy, because you can enjoy watching everyone else open their presents." (Hrrmph)

The younger one looked up from her picture of Fairy Wars (yes, really - the head fairy wears a black helmet and does funny breathing).  "I know what Santa should bring for Mummy, " she said decidedly.  "What, darling?" I asked in hopeful anticipation.  She went back to a detailed sketch of Fairy, Shot By Arrow.

"Easy," she said.  "Make-up.  Lots and LOTS of make-up".

Right then.  There's one little girl who will be getting bath salts in her Christmas stocking....

I want one of those...

Because I thought I sounded moany in the last entry, here's a cheery one.  How FABULOUS is this?  All my friends are happily represented here! Someone please tell me how to justify buying it?!

BUENAVENTURA PRESS
What a super place!

AFTERTHOUGHT
Although I don't think I know any snipers.  At least, I do hope not.

Oh Lordy.  That'll be the next thing...

From one black hole to another...

Ok, sometimes I need to remind myself to step back and recall that there is always a bigger picture. Things that occasionally seem to matter, and really really matter, can perhaps be relegated to their rightful place entitled Pointless. It's like the dog-hairy-dust that piles together under the piano. It probably shouldn't be there, but since I'm the only one who knows, where's the harm? One day, one day, I'll bend down and move it. When I remember.

Good old Nasa, hey, for knowing when to be helpful. Their Astronomy Picture of the Day page is just the ticket when you need to come up for air. And much as some of the pictures do make me want to lie down and grip the earth I'm on, lest I slide off into all that velvet blackness, it does also cautiously whisper that in the long run, whatever certain people shriek and however shreddingly they shriek it, this incredibly unfathomable universe around us really isn't that bothered. And therefore perhaps neither should we be.

"Think of all those people in China who don't give a damn," someone said recently.

I am really trying. But I am also getting crosser too. Push me MUCH more, you, and I'll blog it. ALL of it.

Japan's Sudden Hermits

I've said it before but I love Japan for being weird and wonderful in equal measure. To me. And of course I realise it's a matter of perspective, but although I would never live in Japan again, I also know I would never be bored there. When I first started this silly blog, a friend in Japan sent me an email saying "Do NOT fill it with strange things from Japan". And I've really tried. I know there's the exercise video back in one of the first posts, but since then I have been positively swotty in my willingness to comply. And there's so MUCH gloriously weird stuff one could write about, you have to give me some credit for that, A-chan.

But recently I have been dealing with such a frightful situation of relentless, targeted abuse, (deadly meningitis on its own is just too dull - we needed something more to think about, really we did) and today it left me wanting to build a den behind the sofa and move in. I didn't do that, actually, but I did spend a few moments with the blanket drawn very firmly over my head, and in this shut-them-out moment, I remembered the hikikomori.

Going back a bit, one thing that struck me so much while I lived in Kobe was the Japanese penchant for gentle and philosophical acceptance of "syndromes". The bizarre catches on fast there. You hear of one weird person doing one weird thing and, before you know it, there are lots of weird people doing the same weird thing and bang - you have a syndrome. Oh ok, you could sometimes call it a phase, or a fad, or crazy-crazy craze, but I'm not really talking about the Lolitas, or Ganguro (girls who dye their hair white and black themselves up with fake tan - probably all moved on now but it used to freak the hell out of me...). That's all pretty bloody odd, I think, but now I mean the darker stuff. People flocking to get lost forever in the Suicide Forest of Aokigahara, the kegadol fashion (sex yourself up with bandages to look injured, anyone?) and one that struck me so much while I was there, and which came back to me tonight, hikikomori.

Hikikomori is widespread enough to be described as a sociological phenomenon, although I'm not sure if it as still as prevalent now as it was ten years ago, when the western media started gasping. Usually ascribed to teenage boys (though girls and non-teens were certainly not immune) the hikikomori can perhaps be best represented in our terms as a Sudden Hermit. Certainly, drop-out, often used for want of a real translation, cannot really cut it. These poor people isolate themselves, wholly and without warning, within one room of the house and refuse to come out. Sometimes for years. Causes are often cited along the lines of "inability to conform", " buckling under social pressure", "failure to meet academic expectation" and the good old use-for-all "bullying".

I do not, at all, mean to belittle the obviously disturbed psychological state of someone who one day comes home, walks into his bedroom and refuses to come out again. The effect that would have first on the sufferer and, perhaps more, on his family is unthinkable. But when you start reading up on the stories of those who have suffered from the syndrome, either as a hikikomori themselves or as the person who then had to ensure their survival (in most cases their mother) you do end up rather open-mouthed. I've been re-reading tonight, and you come across tales of families who built new kitchens after their hikikomori son would not allow anyone into their old one; mothers who stayed at home permanently the first moment of self-incarceration, thereby hermitising themselves as completely, so that they would always be on hand, if needed. And families who declared their child dead, rather than face the humiliation of admitting to a hikikomori teenager, and committed themselves to a life of smuggling in food.

It's tragic, but I can't help wondering. Isn't this acceptance of it all a bit, well, passive? It is after all only a door. Can't you kick it in, walk in and march them off to a psychologist? Or at least to the shower. Or am I just too brutally Victorian for words? I honestly can't believe if J or J ever shut themselves in our kitchen that R are I would say "How troublesome, we'll just have to build ourselves a new one."

And however much public and social soul-searching you do for the "cause" of such behaviour, could it not just be that, well, sometimes weird ideas just catch on? I saw one report suggesting that Japan's sakkoku, its 200 year period of total isolation, was the root cause, as it idealised a spirit of the solitary "within the blood of its citizens"...academic, I agree, but I am dubious. I'm not sure if the term has even been medicalised now, and I think it is striking that when you do scan the various research papers available online,they do often say they have difficulties finding similar cases in other parts of the world. Which doesn't mean they don't exist, but just not on such a scale.

I don't get it at all, which is not to say I am totally without sympathy. I probably am simply not far-thinking enough. Anyway, it was all interesting enough to get me out from under the Blanket of Despair.

So that's something else to thank Japan for.

PS I don't actually think hermitise IS a verb, but I rather like it...



and PPS I am SO sorry, Yumi-chan, but I couldn't resist..!

I do wish Dudamel would pop in for tea one morning.

Ok, here is something really to cheer and inspire.

You cannot beat the story of El Sistema as an example of the amazing coming out of the awful; it's a true triumph of a philanthropic dream of one man being expertly managed through all the necessary economic labyrinths into its current, breath-taking being. And since you are supposed only to be a complete human being yourself when you are able to declare something positive about any and every person, (try Stalin or Pal Pot!!) then this would, for me, be a rare tick alongside Hugo Chavez. As he, apparently, champions it.

Which is another stunning factor. El Sistema flourished for over 30 years under both leftist and rightist political administrations.

Oh you could wax on for ages.

But this I have come back to again and again over the past 10 days and I defy anyone to watch it and remain unmoved. Bearing in mind that they say 90% of these kids come from the most difficult and impoverished echelons of Venezuelan society, including Dudamel himself.





And now listen to Maestro Abreu's speech on Tedtalks. Making sense of the world in a mere 20 minutes.

Oh this is ALL so much more fun than moaning!

No more whinging

These have been strange times. My friend E from Utrecht emailed me recently in reference to a recent turn of mad events, and said "Wow, you guys haven't been spared much over the past five years". By golly, I thought, she's right. And mentioned this to R, in rather an inward-looking, Eeyore-ish way.

R thinks differently. R thinks it's all a matter of perspective. Actually, he thinks, we have been spared ALL sorts. Yes, my back gave out and I had no end of time lying around on floors looking at Helping People with a pained expression, BUT...I didn't need surgery in the end, did I? J stopped our hearts 14 times in as many months with her rather sinister twists on febrile convulsions which left her a motionless greyish-blue and us gibbering wrecks BUT...she's fine now, isn't she? R got knocked off his bike this summer in a hit-and-run in London, which imprinted his bike forlornly into the tarmac, BUT...it was only the bike, wasn't it? And the meningitis, well, that was horrid, but the dark forecasts we were given that night with relation to cryptococcus, haven't come to be. Have they? And finally, my mum. And this is the hardest bit to play Pollyanna with, but I have, and I think she'd agree - yes, she was suddenly, hastily whipped away by cancer just when J had been born, BUT. She DID get to see him. And cancer is very often far crueller in its decision to linger. That, at least, she was spared.

To borrow from Jerome, R comes out quite sensible at times.

And in any case, things, all round, are looking up. Just one crazed and vile situation blazes on in the face of all credulity, but you know? I really think the time has come to fight back and so, there may even be a chink of light at the end of this particular tunnel too.

It's all a matter of changing your perspective. As my great-grandmother used to declare, in response to any whining "Come on then lass, I'll take thee to't graveyard and see if owt will swap with thee". To be frank, sadly one doesn't need to be as drastic as the graveyard. Iraq, North Korea, Burma, Zimbabwe, Gaza et al are all equal cases in point. I really wouldn't want to swap there either.

So, you just have to spot the lucky bits when they are there, right, R? Although, really, I'd quite like things to be just a little bit boring for a while now. To catch my breath a bit, you know.

I'm sorry for my views, I must have been confused...

When common decency to other people proscribes real honesty, it's a jolly good thing that other people can say it for you.

Oh My Giddy Aunt

There's an older post here somewhere, where I was blibbering on about how I'd surprised myself, after embedding a plug in my foot, with my capacity for swear words .

But something else happened today. My 3-year-old is at the stage where she externally exudes a delightful innocence while at the same time seething internally with mischief. She has also realised that a wide-eyed, pink-cheeked expression of ingenuousness can pull the wool over most people's eyes and allow her, on those occasions, to get away with what she wants. My dad is a regular victim of this, but while he relaxes in Australia, she has been looking for new prey.

So. Today we went to meet a new music teacher (and before it sounds too Surrey for words - the idea of taking a 3-year-old to a music teacher - I must say there IS a story behind it but it's too involved to blog). Anyway. This lovely lady was all friendliness and enthusiasm and J responded in a similar way. Together they played some notes and clapped rhythms, we all smiled and everything was well.

And then I saw it - a slight flicker, in a very wide eye.

"Now duckie, " said Nice Music Teacher "We're going to sing your name. I shall sing "What-oh-what-is-YOUR-name? "(C, C, C, C, Eeeee, C) and YOU shall reply "My name is J - ". My 3 year old nodded her plaits very enthusiastically and was rewarded with the most indulgent of smiles. Which she returned, just a little bit too sweetly.

Off they went. Nice Teacher played an accompanying chord and sang her line. J lifted up her face, and sang, prettily, rhythmically, musically and all:

"My Name is Stink-Arse".

Stink-arse? STINK-ARSE?

Why, why, WHY and where, where, WHERE?! I can't blame her brother, he' s only 4. I won't blame me, not for that one. 'B*gger', yes; I do say that, but stink-arse?

I have never heard anyone say Stink-Arse.

So why, then? Why that? Why couldn't she have said Jelly-Head? Fizzy-Boots? Or Yum-Yum? Even Stink BUM would have been better, in comparison. But please not 'arse'.

It got me thinking though. Every language, every patois, every tiny geographical dialect has its share of curse words, and it's hardly a surprise that studies also show that verboten lexis globally is pretty much as easily categorised into the religious, the visceral (or scatological) and the social as in English. We swear for solidarity, or to offend, to shock, to release tension and show aggression, and these three areas hold enough taboo to make it possible. Logical all round.

However, what I have found out this afternoon is that swearing is not just a case of uncontrolled utterance. As far as our brains are concerned, expletives can be an amalgam of spontaneity and deliberation. Even in what may feel like an uncontrolled outburst of Naughty Words, we do apparently still make conscious decision on the choice of our language, after a split second assessment of the situation.

I also learnt this. While the left hemisphere of the brain is in charge of language, the right part runs emotional linguistic content. That I knew. However, apparently, the lower part of the brain manages swearing, along with instinctive emotion, and it is an activity which involves both the limbic system (behaviour, emotion and memory) and the basal ganglia (motor functions, impulse control). But this is where it gets interesting. It seems, from my very basic and interrupted reading (was also simultaneously doing a Meccano Robot, and making fishcakes for tea) that the brain stores swear words as complete lexical units, rather than singular, combinable phonemes. That I didn't know.

So my 3 year old is just repeating, I asked my Clever Former Colleague who can still sit in his office surrounded by books, by dint of having a wife who does the childcare.

"Young children will always remember illicit language, long before they truly comprehend the meaning" he assured me. "Curse words are more memorable, and studies consistently show that in any language, taboo words given in a list of randoms will be remembered first. If you write the word 'cat' in pink and ask someone to read the colour not the word, they will do it. Use a swear word, and it is more difficult. It's the way we are wired."

So if a Generation Game-type conveyor belt passes us full of words, some of them naughty, it's the latter we'll be taking home?

"It's not a very academic example, " he said politely, after a long pause "but, I think, yes." And for the first time, he didn't ask me if I was planning to return to work.

Thank goodness for that, then. My daughter was not conjuring horrid images in her head to verbalise in an attempt to shock. She was just repeating, probably uncomprehendingly, something she'd heard.

Which, however, still begs the question. WHERE had she heard that?

I have my suspicions and I shall be Miss Marple in my quest to find out...

Being more expert on Burkina Faso than the day before.

It took me an hour and a half to get round the supermarket and buy pumpkin pie ingredients for R yesterday. Mostly because I spent the main part of this time sitting on the bonnet of my car talking to the lovely man who had offered to wash it.

I always think that everyone has a story and the most fascinating tales come to you when you least expect it. He walked up to me and said "Excuse me, lady, but THAT baby needs a wash" and proceeded to pick at the great globule of windscreen bird muck with his fingernail. I shrieked with prissiness and tried to find him a wetwipe. He laughed back at me. "Lady, " he said "I am from Burkina Faso. We don't worry about such things there."

I was immediately hooked. "Burkina Faso?"

He grinned. "I bet you don't know where it is".

I have pride, even in a supermarket car park near Staines. I told him I knew exactly where it was, that it rubbed its landlocked borders with Mali and Niger, and Ghana and Togo (I swallowed that last one a bit as I wasn't sure - I always mix up Togo with Benin, ignorantly. Having looked at the map now, I can see it's both, anyway). I said it used to be called Upper Volta, had been nabbed by the French, and it's capital was Ouagadougu and I sat down on the bonnet and waited for him to be impressed.

He wasn't. He laughed again. "Not Ouagadougu," he chuckled. "OuagaDOUgu".

It did sound better when he said it. And I thought mine was close but he shook his head and said "No, no, terrible", though very amiably. But he did come and lean against the bonnet and we started talking. About Burkina Faso and what it was like. And I learnt absolutely loads.

He told me how Burkina Faso's neighbours all envy her for her organisation, palm wine and film festival. He told me Burkinabe are relaxed happy people who like to read and tell stories. He took me through the transition from independence to today's regime semi-presidentiel, (sorry, can't find acute accents in this format) and that Burkina Faso means "A Country of Honest People". He told me his favourite dish was a mix of rice, okra and peanut sauce and his Mum made it best. And that 200 000 are still homeless from the summer flooding. And that just after his grandfather had died, his apparition had appeared at his neighbour's house, floated round the dinner table wagging its ghostly finger and scolded him, in front of his family, for having had an affair. And then he sang the anthem for me. Une Seule Nuit. I'd never heard it before.

It is amazing how the most interesting moments come flying at you when you least expect them. I got pretty much the whole shop done in a wonderfully smoky daydream of Burkina Faso and without the tiniest shred of Shopper's Impatience.

One can learn much in Sainsbury's car park on Saturday afternoon. Who'd have thought it?

He also pointed me towards this. I have no idea what it's about, but I'm imagining it might be something to do with getting plastered? Odd, but vaguely compelling.



After-afterthought...
Although one more thing - how awful that so many people have lost everything in one tiny country and the thought of it has barely crept into my mind. THAT was badly done, Emma. Badly done indeed.

(Self-indulgently) thinking aloud...

My bloody head has had me up in the night again. I have pondered and mused and twisted and turned and am no closer to an answer, and I'm sure this is because there isn't one.

At what point in life do you learn to stand up for yourself? Is it something you do as a child and then learn not to do later on, out of misguided, or ill-judged, politeness? Does age bring with it a certain lily-liveredness? Or is it just me? Have I turned into a commandable chicken-heart, a hushed, dominated dotard nervously-but-deftly tiptoeing over a daily mound of other people's eggshells?

I've been thinking back to times when I have defended myself. There are not many. But there was once, in the first year at secondary school, during the time that everyone had to carve out their own particular idiosyncratic roles to carry them through; you know, ring-leader, beauty, freak, brainbox, slapper, (slightly mythomaniacal, of course, as we were, after all, only 12). There was a girl in 1B who, unhindered by any likelihood of academic prowess, had decided to craft herself as Hard and Scary Bully. "She's really hard" we would all whisper to each other in notes of awe, while giving her a wide berth in the corridors. "We mustn't mess with her", we reminded each other, as we crept cautiously and subserviently around, pretending we wanted to be friends, though she quite genuinely repelled us.

But then we had an inter-form lacrosse match and I accidentally smacked her on the fingers.

The message came back, hissed down lines of wide-eyed, horrified girls, and later scrawled onto a piece of paper and shoved into the inkwell of my desk: "YOU have had it affter school". I corrected the spelling of "after" and sent it back, inwardly quaking, but fired on by the bated-breath admiration of my slightly swotty, ne'er-do-wrong group of friends, (plaits, clean faces and girl guides on Friday) who gasped gratifyingly at my foolhardiness in taking on the hard gang of girls, (pink hairspray and Friday evenings looking sullen outside Pop-In).

After school, this particular girl was waiting. Like a scene out of Grange Hill, really, with her soon-to-be-tattoed-and-later-pregnant back up gang, grinning inanely behind her. I remember her walking towards me knocking her fist into the palm of her hand and saying "YOU are so going to get it now" (omit 't's, obviously).

I hit her first, with my clarinet case, and ran. And I was never, ever bothered by them afterwards. Yes, I got detention for "ruffian behaviour on public display" and a long, sad lecture from my Head of Year about my "disappointing behaviour which would not bring honour to the school or look good on my University application, in 7 years' time, bla bla" (but it turned out that this girl's brother had weed on our headmistresses car door handle, so I think, secretly, they were a little bit grateful). But I never ever had to deal with any attempted bullying ever again.

At least, not at school.

But now? Now is different. Over the past couple of years I have borne insults, accusations and rebarbative reproach, out of nowhere, and have merely flinched. I have had the most horrendous lies flung around about me and the furthest I've got is to tell people, who already know they aren't true, that they aren't true. I have watched situations develop which I know to be wrong-all-wrong and I have sat dumbly, not wanting to offend. In many cases, I have even become so unnerved that I have ended up, to all intents and purposes, supporting other people's horrible follies rather than risking their wrath by telling them what I really think, ever hiding behind pusillanimous protest that it is "NOT MY BUSINESS"... when I should be screeching "NO NO NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO".

When did I become so damn diluted?

And I mean this on a far wider scale than just within my tiny little life in Surrey. I've said it before, but it's just not right that Mengistu should be living on a ranch and popping to South Africa for treatment. Than Shwe is another one. In fact, one could go on for ages. But me sitting here at my kitchen table, bleating on about things in the world Not Being Fair makes no difference at all. What DO you do then? Switch off? Or choose one and become single-mindedly activist? Do you rectify your own little patch of green first, before branching out onto bigger issues? Or do you hide behind the big stuff and forget what's under your feet?

Suddenly, I feel a little bit like the Lion on the Yellow Brick Road. Somewhere and sometime, I would like someone to push upon me a whole dose of courage so, finally, I can begin to re-discover the guts to sod all the eggshells.

What horrible English I do use.



Afterthought

“To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of men.” Thank you, Lincoln. Hitting the nail on the head from beyond the grave. Clever man.

If you can bear looking at him...

I don't think this will stay up very long, but I am quite glad someone took the time to do this...

Crusty Botches of Nature. Apologies to Shakespeare.

Nick Griffin must be rubbing his chubby belly with glee.

He came off rather well, I thought, on his interview with Jon Snow on Channel 4 tonight - making points he wanted to make without much heed to the actual questions, calling James Bethel a "Tory Toff" and referring to Jon Snow as "Peter". A pretty slick performance, but what would anyone expect?

Being slick is what Griffin is all about, surely? And leaving this pointless little roly-poly racist aside, I'm finding I am less perturbed by the BNP itself than by people's reaction to them.

The BNP have, for example, nabbed the Battle of Britain and are promoting it as a nifty little advantageous association with their own political fundament. Naturally, and rightly so, veterans and representatives of British Armed Forces are Not Happy. So there is now a video from the protest group "Nothing British About The BNP" to make their well-justified point. But I don't know. The video is strangely soft-hitting. It reminds us how horrid it is to be at war. It has an atmosphere of sorrowful resignation, and a very odd choice of sober piano running throughout. Sad and sober is wrong, all wrong. Shouldn't we all be spitting chips?

As for whether it will work, I guess that depends who it is aimed at. But who is that then?
Who still needs to be told they are a party of oddly-shaped fascist yobbos, who have all simply upgraded their bova boots to laptops? The dull berks who might vote for them, come election time, I suppose? And if that is so, will a video like this, with its carefully thought out subtleties, really work? Wouldn't it better to have Ray Winston leaning into the TV screen and jabbing a squat finger, while growling "Don't vote for them, moron; they are right little s**ts"?

To clarify, and I really have to, just in case, I am NO fan of the BNP. Of course not. It is a nasty little example of segregational thuggery which will always attract a certain amount of support, from a certain section of society. Any society. "But, like, it's not fair that they come over 'ere and take our jobs like..." mumbled an Barnsley example today on TV, with a long vacant stare, suggestive of a true Non-Thinker. But there's nothing particularly British about that - the same happens all over the world. You will always get your fatuous fascist fringes, wherever you are. In the same way that you will always find someone who thinks eating carrots is homicide.

But now the papers are all jumping on board the big Countdown To Question Time. The Church is condemning it, and various ethnic groups echo. I understand why they have to, I really do, but it just all seems like such pretty publicity for an undeserving bunch of often vicious boneheads.

Engineered properly, and Question Time could prove to be a real thorn in their ruffian side. We all know that they have a legal right to say what they want to say, whether we like it or not. And if we want to discount anyone's views properly and honestly, it is always useful to hear what they are. Given enough carefully designed rope, I'm sure the BNP could quite easily hang themselves. It could be very interesting. But I bet, on Thursday, emotion takes over. I bet it turns out to be all about the demonstrators outside. And I bet there'll be so much noise of protest that people will forget to hear what a stinking lot of sewer-bile these people really preach.

I'm not trying to be political, incidentally. Am really just thinking aloud.


(Afterthought)
I do hope they bring up the David Duke video. I do hope someone asks him what the hell he meant by that. It's available on you tube, and worth seeing for true horror, but I'm not putting it up here as I don't want those botches of nature polluting my blog.

"All Idealism Is Falsehood In The Face Of Necessity"

So finally they have negated the Cripplecock. R received a cheery message from the previously off-on-a-jaunt consultant telling him he "didn't have to worry about the really nasty thing" and that they would "really put their thinking caps on" to see what it might be.

This is very good news indeed. It's not, of course, perfect news, because there still lies something beneath. But we feel better. Much more positive at least. And even my father, a pessimist in realist's clothing, heaved a sigh of relief with us, put his black suit back in the cupboard and went off happily to Australia.

3 of us had a coffee and congratulated R while it all sank in, and then I went off and celebrated personally by getting stuck in the toilet in Debenhams.

There is something quite unadmittable about being stuck in a toilet; I just loathe the idea of having to knock pleadingly on a cubicle door hoping someone will hear and help you. You know that, firstly, they will smirk and, secondly, they will bring people along with them. So, FAR more impressively, I climbed out. It was a beautifully seamless escape and it went like this: foot on toilet seat, other foot on cistern, hook arms over flimsy partition, apologise to surprised lady in that cubicle as I loom over from above, repeat same stance but on the other side, throw leg up, wriggle over, lower self down onto the other cistern and job done. Practically a Charlie's Angel in less glamorous clothing. I was really, really proud.

Even the lady from the next cubicle, who must have originally thought I was some terrible kind of Toilet Pervert was impressed. And another hand-washing lady also complimented me. An unexpectedly good day at that point: husband cleared of nasty fatal strain, and I got to receive praise on my agility.

"You must be very fit and supple - I bet you're excellent on those army assault courses", Hand-Washing Lady was saying in all admiration, as I assumed a modest expression while also trying to create a look to suggest, yes, actually I was an assault course demon.

You see, it is indeed pathetically rubbish of me, but I have found since having the children, compliments on my physical being are few and far between. Mostly because it has grown quite immeasurably. And it pays scant lip-service to both suppleness and agility. A horribly creaky pelvis which bears the scars of being mother to a boy with R's genes, and I have ricketed around for the last 5 years like a limping geriatric. I am currently in the middle of several sporting challenges against boys much fitter than me (yes, silly) and, so far, am failing pretty miserably. So, to have someone, even a hand-washing lady I didn't know, tell me I must be fit and supple (FIT AND SUPPLE!!) was such a rare thing, and momentarily very diverting. And comforting. And anyway, I'd had a stressful week.

Pride comes, as ever, before a crashing great fall, and the gremlins were obviously rubbing their hands with glee at being able to show me up for my falsehood. And this came in the realisation that I'd left my bag on the back of the locked door. Dammit, really. And I really did not like my chances of re-performing my once-lucky climb-over feat again in front of my admiring spectators.

"Oh dear" said the ladies. "Shall we go for help?"

"No, no," I replied with my best airiness, "I'll just stand on that bin and lean over."

"Ooh, are you sure?" The ladies were worried. "It doesn't look like a very strong bin for a big girl like you".

And there you had it. Five minutes of escapism into compliments of which I was not worthy, and I was brought bang down to earth in a flash, by a genuinely observed truth.

Seconds later, I was brought bang down to earth for a second, more painful time, by the bin giving way concertina-style and throwing me across the floor, where I hit my head on the sink and ended up strangely contorted in a little grey pool of old floor water.

The fleetingly brief and undeserved image I had allowed myself to entertain of Me, Fit and Supple, dissolved in an instant.

Hand-washing lady and her friend were very concerned. They pulled me to my feet, kindly; one of them, less kindly (though doubtlessly without cruel intention), puffing the words "HEAVE-HO!" as they did it, and they got me paper towels. "Oh, there's a brown stain down the back of your coat," one said with real concern. I said it didn't matter at all, and ran.

As I rushed towards the escalator, I was thinking that I shouldn't exaggerate what had just happened. It was no very big deal to fall off a bin in a toilet with only two people I didn't even know to witness it. But before I GOT to the escalator, there came a piercing call from the end of the store.

"COOOO-EEEEEEE! LADY-WHO-JUST-FELL-OFF-THE-BIN-IN-THE-TOILET?"

I turned round and watched them hurry up and identify me to everyone else.

"You forgot your bag, dear".

But at least R doesn't have cripplecock. That's something, for sure.

GRRRRR

Lots of people have been so kind in asking how R is and what is happening, that I thought it wouldn't hurt to post an update. IS this very arrogant? I have a sneaking suspicion it might be, but it also seems such an easy way of keeping people informed. And also I'm in a bit of a selfish strop, and a bit of blogging, along with a glass of red, might readdress the balance.

So. We waited all day yesterday for these results that the consultant had promised, having waited all bloody weekend with it lurking stinkishly round the backs of our minds. Did he phone? Of course not. So we tried to phone him.

And oh, how the NHS can shine.

"'Oo?" said the brash lady on the switchboard "We 'aven't got one of 'em." I said they must have because he had been dealing with R, in hospital, just last week. The lady, who was no doubt miffed at having an enquirer phone the enquiries part of the hospital and thereby interrupt her reading of Grazia, with an enquiry, finally found that there was a Dr W, and put me through. To cardiology.

"But it's not cardiology I want" I said to the kinder lady I spoke to there "I'm sure it should be neuroscience, or some such area". The Kind Cardiology Lady suggested I ring the ward direct.

So I did. Again, they were very kind, and remembered R from last week, and expressed surprise to hear that results had been promised, but not delivered. "But Dr W is not here for a while", she said. A while? Well, a week, they said. Perhaps. So when he said he would definitely ring and tell us on Monday? Hmmm, was the response. But they did have a doctor with an idea to help. Why, she said, don't you try to get yourself re-admitted via A&E this evening, then you can be waiting on a ward for when the consultant does his rounds tomorrow? I said that A&E was surely for emergency only? She ummed and erred. I suggested it to R, who looked quietly-daggers at the phone, said a very calm No, and that was that.

Now, I don't know whether it has been the recent, pretty much constant submersion into the Mega Mindy theme tune, but at some points in your life you just get so sick of being Polite, and English, and Not-Wanting-to-Make-a-Fuss. And you want to kick some NHS-butt. So. I emailed. I left messages with secretaries. I phoned back and left more. Meanwhile R felt rubbish.

Finally, today, our consultant phoned me back. He didn't know why things had happened as they had, he said. He said, consultant-ishly, that he hoped there wouldn't be undue cause for concern, and that he personally felt there might not. So why had other people felt so differently? If the risk was so very low, why drag him in late in the evening and pump drain-cleaner into his arm? Why tell us he might be there for a few weeks, and immediate treatment was vital? The consultant said that this was very interesting. And that perhaps we could wait till Friday. Ok, I said, then why have we been treated with such superficial urgency, if we could, after all, wait till Friday? Again, apparently, it was an "interesting" point. And he couldn't speak for what other people had done. Of course.

R is calmer and more pragmatic than me. R has shrugged and gone back to the sofa, saying there's not much else we can do. He also goes along with the lines of No-News-Is-Good-News. And where I would usually believe this, I am no longer sure, with the NHS, that this is true. It seems to me that No-News is rather more to do with Someone-Hasn't-Passed-On-A-Message. Or that Someone-Has-Gone-Home-And-Taken-The-Info-With-Them. And while I agree with him that we should just wait, there is a small spoilt brat inside me who wants to scream and stamp a princessy foot.

And I DO know that there are thousands of people in so very much worse situations, both here and around the world, and I should be grateful for all we have, I really do. I KNOW we are lucky to live in a country where we have any access to healthcare, and I know that the NHS is packed full of hard-working, well-trained expertise doing a jolly good job. But I can't help it, tonight. I want to know now. And I want to ask questions. And I would really, really like some answers, very soon. I am so so tired of feeling like I'm falling. And I hate seeing R like this.

Is it really so impossible?

Gosh, I really AM a selfish cow tonight.

Wow!

Wow wow wow!!! You can never have a bad experience at The Big Picture but these pictures have been the best 5 minute break I have had in a long time...

The Berlin Reunion

(and for all the very kind enquiries after R, still no conclusive news, but thank you, thank you anyhow)

MEGA MINDY STAAT PARAAT

I like Holland. R is always vexed by how much I like Holland, but I like its towns and its hagelslag and its greater proportion of tall men. And I like Mega Mindy. She is a Dutch Super-Heroine, who goes around in pink catsuits, being all against injustice and wrong-doing, and whacking Naughty People down. And her boss (male) is the Biggest Clot she's Ever Met, something that she sings out with impunity in the main title song. Ok, so she's still as improbably proportioned as any typical cartoon totty; she is also, of course, hopelessly in love with someone who doesn't know it, but even so. She isn't fawning around a absent-but-authoritarian male boss (yeah, Charlie) who is there simply to Put Her Right, and that works for me. A better role model for girls than, shall we say, Barbie? But more from that particular soap box another day...

Anyway, today I had my own Mega Mindy moment in Addlestone. I was pulling away from a friend's house, with the theme song from Mega Mindy playing (we have reached agreement, my 3 year old and I: ONCE a journey, and that is all. Unfortunately, if the journey involves driving five minutes to pop something through a letterbox and then back in the car, this is apparently, in the cause of Mega Mindy music, two journeys. And so on...anyway, it's on rather a lot.) And I was squinting into the sun to see what was coming, while rather joyfully singing along the main chorus with J "IK BEN MEGA MINDY, MEGA MINDY..". Before I realised it, a cross portly man with no hair had got out of his car in front of me in the road and was glaring.

"OI!" he puffed at me, all fat stomach and concerted aggression "Whatcha say to me?"

"When?" I asked, not winding down my window, because these parts of Surrey can be scary, you know. We're like the hood of Weybridge over here...

"Just then! I pulled up to let you out and you mouthed somefink at me, I saw you. Whatcha say?"

Actually, the sun was so bright, I hadn't seen him, so it was jolly good he had pulled up to let me out.

"I said," I mouthed back through the glass "I SAID 'Ik ben Mega Mindy'". Because I had.

And do you know what? He turned round, ran back to his car and drove off. Just like that.

Wow. These Dutch Super-heroines really rock.

I always said Holland was better.

PS I can't talk about cripplecock at the moment, and I don't mean to be unfeeling. I just can't think about it right now. I need five minutes of being silly and pointless.

Hmmmm...

We are all in uproar, as Mrs Bennett says.

Last night, I'd left R in a hospital bed surrounded by Concerned-Doctor Looks and hushed whispers of cryptococcal (hereafter known as cripplecock) meningitis. But today? Well, another day, another doctor.

R tells me he had not had a good night. And the thought of staying there for another 8-at-least was not particularly warming his cockles. He mentioned this to the consultant and the consultant suggested that perhaps he might like to go home instead.

Really? But what about the 8 days connected to a drip? But what about the cripplecock? "Ah yes, that" came the answer.

"You see, cryptococcal meningitis is very rare, especially in previously healthy cases such as yourself. Now there is certainly some presence, but had it actually taken hold, I think you'd be dead." said the consultant. "And you're not". R says he could only agree - he had already noticed this himself.

So, what about the fact that we'd been told he'd be there for Over A Week At Least? Hmmm, responded the consultant. What about the fact that they'd rushed him back in on a cripplecock likelihood and scared the living daylights out of us? What about the fact that someone didn't read the instructions on the cripplecock antibiotic fluid and unleashed a whole dose of something into his arm, which sent him into a full-body reaction, until he told them to stop? Hmmm, again, said the consultant, before adding as an afterthought that he would Say Something Stern about that last bit. So what is wrong? "I don't know", was the reply "Something is, but I don't know what. We're sending off for more tests and we'll let you know in - er - a couple of weeks?"

Right then.

So, R found himself blinking in the daylight on his surprise way back home for the second time in 24 hours. Still with the cracking headache of , ooh, 6 months now? And whereas yesterday they had discharged him on a Wait-and-See, and then called him back in on pain of death, today they have seemingly discharged him for Being Not Dead.

My friend K, who is of greater wit than I, very swiftly pointed out to R that Being Not Dead is a somewhat medieval diagnosis. But I feel inspired. Last night, I felt helplessly lost - shut out from the medical world by a gaping lack of knowledge and understanding. But today, I feel slightly more hopeful. Even though I haven't touched a science since O level, I too can make a medical diagnosis. And I could even have beaten our consultant to it. If Being Not Dead is all they had really needed to know, I could have told them myself.

Now, I don't mean to dig at our NHS because the staff, for us, have always been wonderful. I'm sure they'd forgive me though for saying the system is occasionally farcical. Two days before my Mum died in hospital, she was left on a wire frame bed with no mattress in a corridor for 7 hours because "there was nowhere else for her to go". And at the beginning of this week, they wouldn't let R leave his bed, which he didn't actually need, because then he'd lose his place in a queue for an MRI, which he didn't actually get.

You could go on for hours on this, but there is little point.

But just one little thing. Our experience most recently has not been very encouraging, it's true. But even LESS encouraging is the huge poster that you pass on the way to the Brain Injury Unit with the words " Putting MAX at the heart of everything we do" emblazoned beneath a picture of a grinningly smug Max Clifford. Horrors. I don't mean to be nasty, as I'm sure he made a big and needed donation to be on such a poster, but I'm not sure I am particularly warmed by the idea of any organisation putting Max Clifford at the heart of what they do. Especially one now entrusted with the well being of my husband and future. It makes me wonder if they might sew mouse ears to his back and then Mr Clifford would pop up on his rounds to persuade him to sell his story. Or something. Maybe it's just me. Anyway, some things within the Health Service you just can't help, but some things you can: and massive great photos of Max Clifford leering at people who are already in a heightened state of nerves, is one of those things.

Anyhow. We are now 4 months down the line from the initial hospitalisation, and whereas this time last night I was sitting contemplating all sorts of doom, tonight we are again contemplating all sorts of Don't Know. I almost feel ...well, cheated. R is a bit cross with me - he thinks this sounds as though I would prefer him to have cripplecock so that my pangs of anxiety throughout last night were more justified. Or because we had so many lovely messages and offers for help from so many friends who'd heard about the cripplecock and our panic, that I almost feel we'd be letting them down IF he hasn't got it after all.

And I made all those rash promises. Which, incidentally, I now need to keep. So not only has the NHS rather messed us around of late, it has now also got me promising to clean out that kitchen belch cupboard and to be more domestically competent, among other things, and that - that - is unforgivable.

Ah well, so ends this particular saga until the test results come through. But as ever, there are always occasions for a chuckle. Firstly, my 3 year old was delighted when she woke up to find a friend had very kindly stayed over last night for company etc.

"When my Daddy goes to hospital all night, B's Daddy comes to sleep here instead", she announced to a neighbour today, thus labelling me Morally Defunct Street Hussy.

And then my Dad. "My black suit," he complained today on the phone "I've got it out of the wardrobe, I've put it back in. Out again, and in again. DO I need to get it cleaned or not?"

Oh, you can't beat it.

PS
On a serious note, however, thank you, thank you everyone for all your support and offers of help. We were utterly moved and it helped a lot.
Just one more thing though - R suggested he might play rugby by next weekend. Please send insults, or punch him.

It is 1 am in the morning and I am up bargaining with God.

I am not sure that God will treat any of my offered bargains with much sincerity now though - I have offered them before, when the youngest was in various hospitalised states over her first two years, and I'm pretty sure that as she raced towards each full recovery, my side of whichever bargain I might have promised raced to the back of my mind just as quickly. Were I God, I would probably feel somewhat narked by all this too. My track record, in the eyes of Them Up There must be rather flawed.

But tonight. Tonight, it seems R has managed to develop cryptococcal meningitis. He got back from hospital at 6 and was called back in at 7. "Bollocks" he said to the doctor on the phone. "Bugger." came a bit later. And then "Really?". We are still at the "Really?" stage now. It seems that a rash case of viral meningitis was not enough for R, and he has spent the last 4 months of his own recovery sneakily building a secondary fungal infection which could, in essence, do for him. It seems that his consultant will now have to Eat His Hat after all. As for me, I am just stunned. I do not want to put tents up on my own. I have only just found out where the bonnet handle is. I cannot, CANNOT, contemplate any of the horrendous realities which might be in store and why the hell I am up now putting this all onto my blog I Do Not Know. Perhaps to ellicit some kind of comprehension out of my stupidly befuddled mind. And perhaps because this is the first properly honest thing I've ever put here. But probably most of all, is because it's only my friends who read this and it saves me having to explain out loud and risk the Unspeakable Humiliation of Tears in Public.


But where do you start? How helpless do you feel when your life as you know is handed over to a registrar you have only just met? Do they know what they are doing? DO they? Because I remember the medics at Uni and they were a hardcore party lot and I never saw them study much and I lived with five of them (ok, so they were vets but they used the same building). That has never bothered me until now. After all, I have given lectures in my own particular subject for years and there are still academic swathes of which I am still blissfully ignorant. (Oh, if any readers happen to be former students, please disregard this last bit). Do they really know their stuff? And how will I ever be able to check? When I read up on medical science online, my own complete lack of knowledge condemns me to read terminal illness in everything. Jerome K Jerome once said the only thing you can ever be sure of NOT having, once you peruse the medical journals, is Housemaids Knee and 130 years later it's still the same thing.

But I do know the worse thing you can do at one o clock in the morning is to ponder the what ifs. The best thing you can do is go to sleep and prepare yourself for tomorrow. But I am not sensible tonight and I am up pondering the what ifs. And bargaining with God.

How do these offers sound?

If everything can be ok, I will do my best to raise funds for a shelterbox to go t0 those poor, poor people in Indonesia.

If everything can be ok, I will get over my fear of flying and not leave R to sit with the kids while I grip onto someone else's shoulder having first relieved the departure lounge of all its Bloody Mary.

If everything can be ok, I will try really hard to Be Sweet to one particular person who does not at all deserve it.

If everything can be ok, I will organise a group of singers to visit the Old People's Home to sing carols, like I promise to every year and never get round to.

And if everything can be ok, I will never again bemoan the size of our house and garden. I will never shout swear words at the kitchen cupboard (the one which belches all its contents at you as soon as you open it), but I will keep it ordered and lovely. I will keep the dog bathed. I will iron as soon as it is needed and remember to hoover the stairs. I will even think about having decent nails and wearing gardening gloves. I will not roll my eyes at people who make grammar mistakes nor sniff when they spell "definitely" with an "a".

But most of all, I will be far more grateful for the mundanity that I am sometimes so rude about.

I wonder if such a public declaration of all this lends any gravitas to my promises?

PS
I realise much of this is flippant, but I have always found flippancy SUCH a comforting antidote.

But at least this had made me laugh...

Thank goodness for other people to make things seem less mad, purely by way of their own insanity. Today I popped into, shall we say, A Shop to pick up a few basic store cupboard items, the absence of which had been brought to light by a recent cooking session with a friend from Bangalore.

The lady cashier looked at me. "Ooh, lots of spices," she said with interest. "Er, yes" I responded in my best Polite Shopping Wife voice, there not being much one could have added to that. "Indian?" she asked. "Well, some of them, yes, "I replied "but I think lemon grass is more often linked to South East Asia."

The woman looked at me oddly. "Not your shopping," she said, as though I was on the simple side "YOU, I meant. Are YOU Indian?"

Now here's the thing. I don't think I could ever be described as Looking Indian. I have faded, slightly dishwater hair which used to be rudely ginger, and all the other non-super traits which go with that colouring, like pale skin and freckles, which have now maliciously ganged up in places to give me a more blotchy brown-patch look. Over the years, I have often been told I look "soooooo English" and I say this without ego, as I am sure it cannot be a compliment. Once, a black cab driver told me I looked "just like Fergie". Can you imagine? I was so cross that I got out early in protest, (before realising that having then to walk over Waterloo Bridge in the rain was a perfect exemplification of Cutting Off One's Nose to Spite One's Face, while also not bothering the cab driver one jot). But honestly. Fergie, indeed; that is just being beastly.

Anyway, back to the shop. "Er, no," I said "Er, I'm not Indian. Why would you think that?"

"Because," she said, all raised eyebrows and slightly amused looks "you're buying all this Indian stuff and so I thought you might be Indian."

I told her again I wasn't Indian. I said I was English. Very English.

She looked at me for a while and then put on a gentle-warning voice.
"There's nothing wrong with being Indian," she said, slowly. "Not everyone thinks that being English is the Be All. I bet there are lots of people who are really proud of being Indian. You should remember that really".

It was like I'd been teleported into an episode of Goodness Gracious Me. I stood there, completely at a loss. It seemed I was actually being reprimanded for not being proud of being Indian.

"I'm not saying I don't want to be Indian, " I tried "I'm only saying I'm not, in fact, Indian. And therefore I can't be proud of being it. Can I?"

She gave me a long look. "Well," she said "I'm just saying that there must be PLENTY who are actually very happy to be Indian and therefore don't deny it".

HOW is one supposed to react to such utter barminess? "I know that," I said "and I'm not denying being Indian and would have no problem with being Indian, only I am not and that's hardly my fault. Are YOU Indian?"

"No", she said "I'm from Norfolk".

Oh, well, then....

Rumi

Reading Rumi reminds me of how inefficiently I think. It reminds me that I am not a scholar, and that I don't truly understand Sufism, although occasionally, just very occasionally, I think I do. At any rate, I'd like to be a Whirling Dervish once, just to see.

But anyway, with a nod to dependence on translation, I did think this was rather super.

Lets hope so, Rumi, hey.



"One day you will look back and laugh at yourself.

You’ll say, “ I can’t believe I was so asleep!

How did I ever forget the truth?

How ridiculous to believe that sadness and sickness

Are anything other than bad dreams.”

Someone put some coffee on, please. It's time to wake up.

We are very dull, Eliza...

I feel utterly stifled - silenced even - by these past couple of days, and so I am deliberately Not Doing Any Proper Thinking for a while. Sometimes you have to be the one to nurture your own sanity, or at least be able to define its limits. Diversion is so much cheaper than psychiatry.

And with that in mind, here's a pointlessly random thought. What price the effort of learning Arabic if you could use it like this?




I'd forgotten about Souad Massi, until I found her while looking for Richard Bona. Tut.

Oh, Sunday uproars and Richard Bona...

Actually, it's a rotten shame, but you can't be truly honest on blogs because it means revealing the Issues of Other People and they are bound to get miffed. Much better the old system of the diary hidden in a bedside drawer, hunted down only sneaking siblings... whatever they read, these naughty easvesdroppers-by-text, they DESERVE! Isn't that what we are told?

But I have to say it's been exhaustingly eventful recently, (in a pathetically unimportant way, in the grand scheme of things, natch) and more so this Sunday evening. Soredomo, in the present lull of serenity, thank GOODNESS for a sudden flash back to this song. What on earth was I thinking, forgetting about Richard Bona and Suninga?



I can't write more because I've had too much red wine. How awful is that, on a Sunday? No wonder I am completely without wit.

I could explain, but I had absolutely better not...

Back to something a bit more normal...

I'm already a bit embarrassed by that last post. Just in case anyone should actually read it. But I'm going to leave it up because this blogging lark is all about stepping outside your comfort zone, surely?

But to redress the balance slightly, I can't go to sleep on just that. SO. I must just jot down something I didn't know before and do now. Papal Bulls, such that came whizzing over from Roma to tell Henry VIII to get back in his regal box, for example, were named after BULLAE (Lat noun pl), which were, apparently, a type of clay or metal seal used in such highly protected communications. Because this type of seal was pretty much tamper-proof.

Interesting. I always wondered why they were so-named. Must remember to tell Best Friend From School, who believed through much of our A level history that the chosen papal messenger in Tudor times was, actually, a long-travelling pet bull from the pope's own herd. Oh, and who also expressed great admiration for the "terribly clever" gorillas who had once "driven themselves" into Mexico City. And who once managed to get the words "masturbation" and "menstruation" into school prayers after becoming distracted by "how budgies feed each other". And who, in her proudest moment, accepted a waggish dare to lock our moody lacrosse teacher into the stick cupboard so we might avoid a lost-match shouty post mortem lecture, and managed it brilliantly, BUT with herself also on the wrong side of the door. Wonderful, wonderful.

I am now giggling into my tea like a schoolgirl-that-was and am no longer feeling quite so spooked.

Much better.

I'm not sure for how long I can admit to this in public but...

Someone recently pointed out, without too much intention of being helpful, that a blog which remains dormant is of "little interest" to the blog reading community. I take the dark hint, indeed - but 2 things. I don't think my blog is of interest to any community, for a start, and secondly, I have to claim school holidays as a Difficult Time for Blogging. I have been fully immersed into an idyllic summer existence of tee pees and campfires and beach trips and country shows and all sorts. And yes, before it sounds too horribly fake, a good deal of bleeping about Having No Time To Myself and general, mind-numbing exhaustion and sneakily early bedtimes. Plus, I couldn't think of anything to blog about.

But now I can. And it's only because I'm reasonably confident that no one is going to read this any more after its long state of dormancy, that I am happy to write it. R will tut and sigh and hrumph but I actually think, self-indulgently as ever, airing this may be a cathartic action to take. Perhaps, when it's all written down, I will look at it and say "What rot!", delete it, roll eyes at self and continue as before.

So this is it anyhow: I think, or at least, I think that I think that I think that I am beginning to get some kind of sixth sense. And I call it that, only because I have no other way to describe it. Some kind of intuition maybe. Something weird is in the water and I don't quite know what to do with it.

I THINK I am beginning to see something, some kind of company, which I have to describe as a ghost because I have no other word, or description for it. And it's not "seeing" as such. More like a sensation. A very acute smell, and a physical response. I suddenly hear what I can only describe as a pop, right behind my ear. I have felt myself shaken, and I have had moments when the air around me is suddenly pervaded by an intense odour. Sometimes perfumey, if this is an adjective, sometimes smokey and cold. And it's not just happening in those bleary night time moments of semi-consciousness. It's happening in the middle of the broad damn daylight and I have no rational explanation with which I can shoo it all away.

Now. I can at this stage tut and sigh along with everyone else and put this down to tiredness, an active imagination, and expectation of what I might already suspect, or, more, want to suspect. Or better, some kind of strange psychological response to something I will not understand because I waftily studied languages ( the year abroad, of course) and not sensible, practical scientific subjects...I don't know. But I do know that I am not mad, and I do know that it is not just me who is "getting" all this.

My beautiful Hungarian hunting dog, who I have often derided for her lack of sense, seems to be getting it too. She reacts to the same things I am sensing, and at the same time. I hear a pop and she growls. I get a funny smell and she puts her head up and starts sniffing curiously. I get an odd sense of company and she stares intently at one place in the room, her hackles ever so slightly flicking up her back. If it weren't for her, I would happily write it all off as mental or hormonal instability, but unless this sort of thing is a virus prone to cross-species contamination, I can't.

And one thing I do have to bear in mind is that it has happened before, years ago when we were in Japan. And R saw it at the same time, although now he does rather huff and sigh if you remind him of it. (you do, R, you do). I almost wish you hadn't. You see, other people saying "Oooh that IS weird", or dogs suddenly frowning and staring at a something just over your shoulder, is a bit of a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it's great comfort to know you are not a ditsy air-brain with an over-active imagination. Or at least, if you are, there are two of you. On the other, you end up with unanswered questions, which can be unsettling.

Another interesting thing, people are beginning to bring their own smells. Someone was lying to me the other day, and I could SMELL it. Really. I knew the truth was being fabricated and I could smell it, like burnt rubber. Another recent occasion of being thrown into the company of someone I really can't abide (but shhhhhhh) and this person STANK of wet potato peelings left in a carrier bag. Rotten, disgusting potato peelings. Conversely, all the lovely people I have seen lately haven't smelt at all; one might have expected them to bring with them the air of a fresh daisy field, but no. It seems to be only the bad stenches that come through.

What's going on? What is my brain doing to me? Is it all self-made? Am I jumping at a theoretical version of my own shadow? Or is there something unexplained which will remain unexplained enough for me to stamp my own interpretation onto it? Or has R managed to play to most elaborate practical joke yet on me and persuaded the dog to be in on it?

And since this now seems to be nothing but a list of questions, here are some more. Where the hell do you go to ask? What can anybody say? My experience is that you either get amused, smirky-but- sympathetic looks from confident non-believers who think you've turned the corner to Doolally, and always find a way of expressing their politest surprise that you - "of all people, really" - would be "into that sort of thing". OR you get people who say "My auntie sees ghosts and talks to them in 'er parlour with 'er cats". OR you end up forcing a reaction from your uncomfortable friends who do their best either to muster polite interest, with curious sidelong glances at each other when they think you're not looking, OR who shriek "Yikes! WITCHY!" and cancel coffee unless it "can be somewhere else rather than at yours cos it sounds a bit spooky there" (you know who you are...).

Do you ask vicars or doctors about this? Can anyone tell you? Is there a trustworthy book? Is the best thing just to shut up about the whole hoojimaflip and hope it goes away? Or do you think "Ooh, interesting!" and embrace it? And if so, how?

Because what worries me most of all, is that accepting it would inevitably mean I would have to find a reason for why this is all happening now. Is it a subconscious expression of some snippet of dread, which perhaps itself comes from nothing more than the general hazard of having young children and reading the news about the Big Bad World? Is it because recent events have conspired to leave me missing my mum so much that I am prepared to invent a whole new para-world as a safety net over ultimate loss? Have I just alerted my mind to the possibility and now it's trying to find all sorts of examples to back it up? Or am I simply imagining it all as an excuse to blog instead of cleaning that tenacious sauce off the difficult bit of the hob?

I am nearly 39 years old and I am writing about what I think may be ghosts, and looking over my shoulder at my empty room. Turns you didn't expect your life to take.

Thank goodness the dog is asleep.

Answers, please. Any at all.

I have had a couple of unsatisfactory conversations recently where I have had the very sneaking suspicion that my responder has, from the outset, imagined he knew what I was going to say next and, worse, could suppose my reasons for saying it.

The fault was no doubt mine, for expressing myself ineloquently.

But this, in turn, has made me quite envious of Rebecca West. I saw this quote in last week's THE WEEK, and it matches my Monday morning mood exactly today. Oh, to be articulate.


"I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat or a prostitute."
Rebecca West

A dead 'ard 'ousewife wha' I am

I have been chastised for not keeping up the daily blog, and thus failing in the "six seconds a day" idea that I began with. Well, that was an idea always to be ambitious, and my computer is so dinosauric (I have to confess to not knowing that was a legitimate adjective before now) that it takes a good 15 minutes of bleeping and churning for me to get to where I want anyway.

I do do DOOOO aim to write something about the beguinages, about the Madres de Plaza de Mayo, and about the middle movement of a John Field piano concerto I heard recently - all things that have fascinated me over the mountain of my post-camping laundry this week (and yes, Blog Critic, I do mean "fascinated ME" - this blogging is all self-indulgent and I've already said that, my sweet...)

But.

Yesterday, I took a leap over a pile of said laundry and landed, flat-foot, right on top of an upturned hoover plug. Which most successfully embedded itself firmly in my left foot. I cannot even recount the pain of it, but today it doesn't seem to have gone down much. I have raided the private painkiller stash of He-With-Meningitis, and only now, mixed with red wine, it seems to be retreating. Even R, who would call decapitation a "flesh wound" and once told me during childbirth, with some indignation, that "he knew what it felt like because he played rugby", said it looked "quite nasty". So I really am, by Surrey Housewife standards, injured.


My friend S, who was here at the time, said, somewhat approvingly, as she crawled around on the floor with wet wipes picking up blood "You did SO well not to swear". But she didn't realise that I had fallen forward onto the bed and every single vile and stenchy word was screeched into the muffling sanctuary of the duvet.

And this is it - I really did learn one thing from the whole horrid experience.

I had NO idea I could be such a Posh Lady Dirty Mouth. I really do know a lot of bad expressions. Awfully despicable ones. And I can use them all in a variety of ways to invent some startlingly revolting collocations. Where do they all come from? Does everyone have a dark-brooding dictionary of Astonishingly Naughty lexis lurking around in the subconscious, waiting for such situations, in order to jostle out of your mouth and shock you and the world about you? Are we all just a hoover-plug away from some level of Tourettes? Or do I just have a Really Filthy Mouth?

I almost don't know whether to feel ashamed or impressed. I am certainly looking at myself differently.

Hey!

Perhaps I am not as suburbanly boring as I thought. Maybe...I'm a Housewife Wiv Attitude. Maybe I'm just that little bit more street, and other housewives will now have to give me a bi' ov respec'. Maybe I need to drop the RP along with my Ts and Hs and start peppering my speech with "geeza'" and "know wha' I mean, like?" and "phat!".

No, it's no good. Even in jest, I can't do it. And it is not helped by the fact that I am acutely aware, as I write all this rubbish, that I have a pan of chutney bubbling gently on my hob, from the courgettes off my allotment, and a snoring pedigree dog (she had a defective white nose splash so we got her for free, but still...) at my feet. And I'm listening to the afore-mentioned Field concerto. There is not the least little thing "street" about me, and it's rather a shame.

It was a fun illusion for the seconds it lasted, but there's no escaping it. A Surrey Housewife I now am, and that I shall no doubt stay, for a while. Apart from when hoover plugs get stuck in my foot.


This Armstrong and Miller sketch rather illustrates it - like I said before, sometimes one just has to accept one is bloody ridiculous.

Which reminds me. I still haven't hypnotised that chicken.