Journalistic Stardom and More Co-ordinating Crips

I got an article published on the BBC Ouch! website today. This is very exciting – the first paid employment of my adult life no less. But also, they asked me to do it. The BBC actually approached me to write for them. This is not an incredibly big deal in the wider scheme of things, but for me and my secret belief that I’m useless at everything, this matters. A lot.

Did you know that Lewis Carroll was first published in our very own Whitby Gazzette? The title of my novel is from a Lewis Carroll poem. My novel is called To Fear The Light and it's from the poem Phantasmogoria. The relevant verse goes;

“And as to being in a fright
Allow me to remark,
That Ghosts have just as good a right
In every way to fear the light
As Men to fear the dark.”

So there you go.

Recommended listening (if a touch traumatic) is last week’s It’s My Story on Radio Four. You’ll have to click that link before the next episode on Thursday or else you’ll get something else. Anyway, it was about a journalist with a heritable impairment and her decisions around starting a family. This was quite interesting because the lady clearly hadn’t got her own disability completely sorted in her head (who has?) and some of the non-disabled people featured had a much more reasonable, less disabling perspective than she did. Anyway, I could say a lot more about this but have a listen.

Spotted another co-ordinating crip at the weekend; a fairly elderly woman being pushed in a wheelchair by (presumably) her daughter, both of them wearing very bright turquoise rain macks. I can’t imagine it was the older woman’s choice to look as much of a pillock as her daughter did.

I popped out on Saturday afternoon and got effectively forced into the road by the crowds on the pavement. This is no good. Other people were walking in the road, but of course when a car came along, they could all hop to safety; I had to trundle along until the next lowered curb. I don't think I was in any danger, but the place was busy and I was worried about getting shouted at by a moody driver, or someone trying to rescue me. So please everyone let those using a wheelchair, a crutch or stick take the inside of the pavement.

Anyway, it has been kind of fun looking after [...], who is mending. They’ve given him the same tablets I take and these made him much more comfortable. Being a total light-weight however, they have induced him to sleep pretty much all weekend – I’ve never known anything like it! But basically he’s all right and since I’m not so bad just now, we’ve not yet reached the stage of crisis with stuff like food and housework. The fact he appears to have caught my cough/cold thingy – over a week since I got ill with it – isn’t exactly helpful, but usually he works through colds, has no rest and thus makes them last for weeks on end. Forty-eight hours sleep might be enough to throw this into touch.

It's good not to feel useless. With me in charge we've eaten well all weekend and the house hasn't burnt down or become infested with rats yet. So that's great really.

Paint Dries, Grass Grows etc.

Today has been almost as uneventful as the last two days, but hey, this is a blog and the lack of anything to write about is no obstacle to writing about it. I performed a really ace checkmate but [...] said I only won because he slipped up. Well, duh.

This evening a Market Research lady came to the door. It is the first one we've had here, but this is probably because last week we set up the doorbell - for the last three years, folks have had to knock on the door and we didn't always hear it. I don't think we missed anything.

Anyway, she says: "I'm from Such-and-such Market Research and we're talking to the ladies in the area. We're talking to the ladies; it will only take up ten minutes of your time. We want to ask the ladies a few questions about toilet cleaner."

Seriously. It sounds like a joke, but this is exactly what she said. Toilet cleaner. Ten Minutes? I can't think of questions about toilet cleaner that would take up two minutes, let alone ten. I was really very curious and I always feel so sorry for people who have to phone you up or knock on your door for a living. But to be honest she had said "ladies" and for this I turned her away. It's very silly, I know. In all the households I know consisting of one or more women it is always the women who purchase and administer the toilet cleaner. But me, I can't stand such truths.

So I told her, "Sorry, I use a man for that sort of thing." and closed the door.

Later I realised that we don't use toilet cleaner, we just use bleach. Why? I don't know, that's what [...] buys and that's what [...] uses and I presume he has some reason. I also presume there's a reason why he choses pine over citrus. Even so, there is never ten minutes worth of conversation to be had there. Not nearly.

The Yellow Blanket Brigade

I’ve been doing a lot of sitting (well, lying propped up) and looking out the window today. The car-park on the other side of the river is packed. It’s school half-term so town is very busy. But I noticed a convoy of five wheelchairs moving along the edge of the carpark towards the town. They were all manual chairs being pushed by assistants and although I couldn’t make out a while lot about the wheelchair-users such as their age or sex, all five of them had bright yellow blankets over their knees. Not fluorescent or reflective yellow, just bright sunshine yellow fabric, like the cloths you buy for dusting. This made me sad. Why? Because I don’t think five wheelchair-users would have chosen to each have the same bright yellow blankets placed over their knees on a sunny day in June.

I wonder if they came from that bus I saw parking a short while earlier. It had writing on which I could read clearly from this side of the river saying “Jesus lives and will return.” Of course it is a cheaper way of doing things; buying a day return to Whitby as opposed to paying separate fares here and back, so Jesus obviously has His head screwed on. And I’m glad to see the King of Kings setting a good example by His use of public transport.

Why is that I connect the bright yellow blanket brigade with the Jesus bus? Why is that you are also making this connection? I need to sleep.

Feeling better *cough*

Last night I developed a cough and didn’t sleep well, but one or other of these factors mean that today I feel miles better than I have in ages. Adrenaline or a good hard kick up my immune system or whatever means that although my throat hurts and my glands are like golf balls, I am (relatively) on top of the world. Yesterday was dreadful. How do I qualify dreadful? Well, I got to the point when I kept bursting into tears because everything hurt so much and I felt so sick and tired (as in sick and also tired as opposed to fed up – although I was that too). Plus when I’m more ill, the codeine’s effects become more profound, I get more confused, vision blurs or bends (as in you watch your hand move one piece on the chessboard but a moment later you realised you moved the one next to it) and for the last few days I have been experiencing things that are not really happening.

I have a history of this sort of thing when I have been very ill before or reacting badly to drugs; this is not a road I want to go down. Fortunately, these things at the moment are just random, like coming into a room and smelling something that I can’t smell. Like cigarettes and coffee, when nobody smokes in the house and nobody has been drinking coffee. Or smelly feet where there are no smelly feet, smelly shoes or camembert anywhere to be found. Or feeling a breeze on my face when all the windows are shut and I know for sure I’m not in a draft. I'm having loads of these every day, but it’s not screwing me up too badly; these experiences aren’t associated with any fear; I just experience it, consider it odd, try to explain it, fail to explain it and move on. I’m only afraid about where this leads, like I say.

I expect it leads nowhere. Although I have been struggling to cope with this latest downer, I don’t think I’m depressed and so long as I’m treading water, I don’t expect to have any complex or negative hallucinations. I know I’m going to feel better soon. And of course today I do feel much better. Plus even though I’ve been laid up, it’s not like I’ve been unable to use my computer or talk on the phone – at least some of the time. And I managed the cinema on Tuesday; that was significant. Unfortunately my miserable brain thinks that I went to the
cinema weeks ago and I haven’t been able to do anything for months on end.

I can’t remember having a cough before – not one independent of a cold. It is quite easy to deal with. It hurts, but pain is relative and relative to what else is going on, this is not painful at all. And of course unlike with a cold I can breath easily and my taste-buds still work. I am very cheerful about this cough.

So all in all I am feeling good.

Doh!

Sorry, I just lost yesterday's post entirely - sorry. It was about Star Wars. Sorry. I'm going go lie down in a darkened room...

It really is back this time

Felt a bit better towards the end of yesterday and this morning I woke up and within an hour or so I was able to confirm that my brain is most definitely functioning, the pain is tolerable. I actually feel like I'm on planet Earth for the first time in about ten days.

I'm writing and it's going well, but since I've been such a miserable sod (and I have been very miserable) I thought I ought to share the great news. I really am over the moon to be able to have clear thoughts again. I can cope with anything if I can just think clearly.

Strangely enough, the only thing that has coincided with this rather dramatic improvement in cognitive function is that I forgot to take my Ibuprofen with tea last night. I know it's called "Brufen Retard" but I thought that was to do with the sustained release nature of the tablets. And I thought they made me brighter, by reducing the swelling in my brain... There may be nothing in this at all of course. I wish I wasn't compelled to analyse why things get better or worse.

Mini Rally

I am feeling absolutely dreadful today, but I was cheered up when the Mini Rally came past outside. They do this every year; I'm not sure where they come from and where they are going to. There was a red one and a camoflauge one and a black one flying the Jolly Roger from either wing-mirror and there was a red on and a turquoise one and a red one with stripes and a purple one and another plainish red one and a really knackered looked forest green one and another red one this time with white stripes and then another red one with a correctly coloured Union Jack on and a silver one with a black and white chequer-board on the roof and then another red one with stripes and a bright Barbie pink one and another red one. Then my legs gave way and by the time I got up they were gone. They were going very fast.

The best Mini I ever saw, which I didn't see today was an ivory or at least off-white one with a monochrome Union Jack on the roof - extremely moddish and groovy.

This was the highlight of my day.