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